


Life in 16 Flavors

by Becky_Blue_Eyes



Series: Life in 16 Flavors Universe [1]
Category: Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-04 00:25:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/704355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Becky_Blue_Eyes/pseuds/Becky_Blue_Eyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When it was all said and done, Vanellope von Schweetz wasn't the only racer to benefit from Sugar Rush's reset. A look into the lives of former palette swaps, imported characters and the secrets hidden in their world's programming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What Has Been Changed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greetings, people of Archive of Our Own! I'm uploading the story I wrote on FanFiction over here at the suggestion of a reviewer, so I hope you enjoy it :D

When it was all said and done, Vanellope von Schweetz wasn't the only racer to benefit from Sugar Rush's reset.

It was taken for granted that there were palette swaps amongst the sixteen racers. After all, there needed to be competition for the chosen avatars, and what was the point in creating even more characters when a few lines of code could clone one of the more rounded racers? Minty Zaki prided herself on having two palette swaps, especially since they tended to place in the top nine more often than say, Adorabeezle Winterpop's clone. The clones were there to take up space when needed, and nobody gave them any mind after the arcade was closed.

That was, until the racers discovered how deeply Turbo had altered their world and the people in it.

Entire characters had existed before he arrived, entire tracks and carts and grand stands filled with adoring citizens who all vanished when he tore their princess out of the code and damaged the lifeblood of Sugar Rush nearly beyond repair. The game, making up for the sudden loss, had cloned characters and gave them nonsense names out of a random name generator (after all, just what did "Sticky Wipplesnit" even  _taste_  like?), but once Vanellope was restored and Turbo's presence eliminated, the roster changed along with the rest of the world.

* * *

A girl peered out from behind a gumdrop towards the towering Diet Cola Mountain. Wiping sugar crystals off onto her cola-colored jacket, she hesitantly walked towards the rows of sugar-free lollipops. In the Before Time, when she was Torvald Batterbutter, a no-name brown Minty Zaki—or was it Sour Appleblossom now?—recolor, there wasn't anything here but a dummied out track. But now Pollipop Fizzydrizzle stared into the maw of a level deep within the mountain, complete and recognized by the game. _Her_ level, all for her to explore.

Before, she had a butterscotch-flavored cart but after the reset it was nowhere to be found. Probably gone forever, seeing how it didn't need to exist now, but she wasn't complaining; it was nice to be as rounded of a racer as her old model, but now she could be herself. And all she had to do was go in there, find her cart, race to her heart's content—

And smack right into the former resident of the mountain.

Pollipop landed on the chocolate earth with a small cloud of cocoa dust, before sheepishly helping her leader up. She hardly recognized Vanellope—after she had won her first trophy, extra code had caught up to her programming and 86ed her ratty hoodie and stockings for her originally designed racing suit. Now she really looked the part of Sugar Rush's Princess or President or whatever she was, especially with the paper cup skirt. "Oh, I'm so sorry."

"It's ok, I didn't even know anyone else knew about this place." She looked at the mountain fondly then, and Pollipop wondered if Before her track had existed enough for Vanellope to live in as a glitch. Had she loved the track as much as Pollipop was programmed to? Did she hate Pollipop for taking it away? "Well, guessing from your colors I'd say this is your track, right?"

"Oh-yes, I was going to see if my cart was—"

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Vanellope adjusted her gloves and held a hand out to Pollipop, grinning as brightly as the lemon drop sun in the minty sky. "What's your name?"

"Pollipop Fizzydrizzle."

"Well then, Miss Fizzy, let's go see if the bridge is finished yet!"

Pollipop skipped off with Vanellope into the cave, letting a smile grow onto freckled cheeks. Becoming her own person now seemed even better with a friend to explore her limits with.

* * *

Candlehead was having a confusing day.

Well, it was Minty Candlezaki now, and that was the crux of the matter.

She played with her new mint-colored jacket, glaring at the chips stuck to her hair. It wasn't really that much of a difference, her cart and level still seemed the same, but the thought that  _his_  actions had affected her on a personal level was a bit disturbing.

At least she wasn't Minty Zaki/Sour Appleblossom, who was testing out her remodeled cart. So far the only difference was that it was made of sour apple instead of mint, and it had a less powerful but longer-lasting boost than before. Sour Apple took it with stride and concentrated facial expressions that seemed as sour-sweet as her name, much to Candle's amusement.

She looked towards the ice cream cake range to the east, and wondered what else might have changed.

"Still pouting, Candle?"

Candle looked up to see Sour Apple smirking over her bright green windshield. "I thought that you'd be happy, since now you've got the corner of minty freshness."

She shrugged and absently tugged on a chocolate chip. "I'm just getting used to the new stuff, that's all."

"Well, how 'bout this then." Sour Apple zoomed forward and put herself parallel to Minty's cart. "I'll race you to my track—let's see if the peppermint bridges turned into hard candy or not."

Candle giggled and jumped into her own cart, revving her engine before chasing after Sour Apple. Today was a confusing day, but she was still better at drifting than Sour Apple, and that was something she could light a candle with.

* * *

Giant fondant trees on almond-layered hills rose in the distance, marking Adorabeezle Winterpop's destination. On the back of her cart was her former palette swap, decked in fruity colors and a large basket of sweets balanced on her head. Marzipanne Sweetifruit was babbling away, marveling at every taffy pond and peppermint tree that whizzed by, and Adorabeezle didn't have it in her to tell the girl to pipe down. As Nougetsia Brumblestain (really, the name made Adorabeezle want to retch), she had never made it past the first third of any given track, so seeing so many different levels had whipped her brain into a whirl of excitable cream. "Ooh, what's that? Double striped trees, I always hated those on Swizz's track, I always fell—ooh that taffy pond has Swedish fish! I never got to see them past that river in Taffyta's track, and over there they would try and eat—ooh we're almost at my track!"

Marzipanne was giggling and bouncing and Adorabeezle felt a stab of guilt. Sure, she wasn't the greatest racer out of the group, but her palette swap had all of her strengths taken out and dummied down even more. Had President Vanellope raced with her pedal cart—and didn't that memory take the sweetness out of her flavoring—she probably would have lapped Marzipanne. "Umm, Marzipanne—"

"And once I get my cart I'll be able to be a really good racer, just you watch! Maybe I'll even be on the roster!"

Adorabeezle bit her lip. "I'm sure you will, Marzipanne—"

"And if I win that'll be the greatest thing ever! Ooh, but Princess—oh I mean President Vanellope's a really great racer, I'll have to try super hard!"

"I know you will, Marzi—"

"Do you think if I do make it onto the roster the gamers will like me?"

Adorabeezle came to a stop before looking at Marzipanne, who's bright green eyes were wide with fear. And in that moment Adorabeezle remembered how Before, after every race she would abandon her clone and go cause trouble up in the northern tracks. How terrible did Marzipanne feel, or any of the other recolors or even Vanellope? She clenched her fists before placing a hand on Marzipanne, watching the girl's eyes light up like sunrise over the ice cream mountains. "They'll love you Marzipanne, I know it."

Marzipanne broke into a grin before jumping off of the cart and running into her track. "Come on, I'll show you where it is! I know it's over here, I just know it and then we can race each other and be best friends and racers forever and all that good stuff!"

Adorabeezle smiled before chasing after her. If Marzipanne could race as fast as she could run and talk, she'll have no problem beating out the competition. And if Adorabeezle could help her do it, then maybe she'll be as sweet as her programming said she was.

* * *

Swizzle Malarkey, or The Swizz as he liked to be called, kicked at the twisted taffy tree in frustration. Even with the help of Gloyd Orangeboar and Crumbelina DiCaramello, he hadn't been able to find her, Sour Apple's former teal palette swap.

He and Sticky Wipplesnit had been best friends since the game turned on. She, being the sweetest out of the recolors, shared his incredible speeds and terrible turning, so they had trained together, pushing their carts to the limit and blowing the other racers away like clouds of flour dust. And now that she was missing, The Swizz felt like tearing up the track until he could get at the code and get her to spawn somewhere he could find her. Granted, Vanellope would probably throw him in the fungeon if he did that, but he was getting pretty desperate. "Gloyd, did you find her?"

"I looked all over my track and Snowanna's, but there's nothing." He nervously adjusted the large pumpkin on his head. "Crumbelina found a new track but it belongs to Jubileena's old clone, and Sticky wasn't there either."

The Swizz nodded before stalking off to his cart. He figured he would go up to the castle and ask the President-Princess for a map or something. He hadn't even found Sticky's new track, and the whole matter was making him want to throw that Turbo jerk into one of the bubblegum dispensers until he was flattened into a new candy covering. He sped out of the Laffy Taffy forest and towards the center of Sugar Rush, planning out revenge as twisted as the colors on his cart. He was musing on the possibilities of turning Turbo into a lollipop when a lemon larger than three of his wheels crashed down onto the front of his cart and squished The Swizz into a layer of meringue.

Well, at least he'd found the new level.

Swearing death to all citrus, he struggled to dig his cart out of the creamy goo but it had burrowed itself into the lemon cream below. He was ready to eat his cart when a voice snorted, "Yeah, that happened to me too. Stupid lemon pie."

The Swizz turned to meet his lost friend standing in bright lemon and white, braided buns carrying white hair out of her teal-brown eyes. The same eyes as Before, and he pulled her into a bear hug. "Help me and I'll help you, umm..."

"Lemonetta Creameringue, and while I'm not as sticky as before I'm still the fastest on the time trials."

"Only because you cheated!" He had his friend back and a whole new level to race her on, and all was good with the game.

* * *

She took a sip of the unsweetened sugarplum tea before meeting the eyes of the other racers. Taffyta had assembled some of the characters once she had found a former recolor sitting lost in her cart outside of her track, and had called for an immediate tea party. Jubileena Bing-Bing, Snowanna Rainbeau, Crumbelina DiCaramello and Rancis Fluggerbutter were all crowded around a table generously provided by their President (she herself was with that wrecking guy from Fix-It Felix, Jr.), and the new girl couldn't help but remember how Before she would've killed to be part of such a party. Now all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and hide.

"So, Bubblebetty, have you run through your track yet?"

Bubblebetty Gummipop smiled nervously at Jubileena, trying not to freak out because dip her dots, her former model was actually talking to her and this is totally not weird and she needed to get her act together, like right  _now_. "Yeah, I did a quick spin but then I kinda drifted off and then T-Taffyta found me..."

"I think I went through there to get to my track. The whole layout's changed, it's all pretty neat, isn't it?" The others agreed with Rancis' statement and Bubblebetty sank into her chair. No, this wasn't all pretty neat, this was terrifying because any second they were going to ignore her like always, and then she'd lose all her races and never get picked to be an avatar and what kind of stupid name was Bubblebetty Gummipop anyways and—

"Well, it's way better than Citrusella Flugpucker, if you ask me." Jubileena smiled brightly at Bubblebetty, and something, well, bubbled up in her stomach, making Bubblebetty smile back.

"Really, I was berry-flavored, not citrus. And what does flugpucker taste like anyways?"

"I don't even know  _what_  a flugpucker is! Wait, Francis should know! What's the flugger in your fluggerbutter?" They all paused then burst into laughter, Rancis throwing a cookie at Crumbelina's head. She then threw a lollipop, which rebounded off of Taffya's head into Snowanna's hair like an afro pick. She froze before launching a spoonful of cream, and the fight was on, fillings and cakes being hurled as the doughnut guards tried to keep order but eventually joined in on the battle.

Bubblebetty found herself laughing with the others as if she really belonged, and startled at the thought that now she did. Now she was a real racer with a real track that the others wanted to play with, and she gathered up all her upset emotions and threw it out with a slab of almond cake into the fray. It splattered and she felt the bubble in her stomach pop with a new sense of belonging.

* * *

The crowds of candy on the grandstands cheered wildly as the racers started their engines for the first Random Roster Race since the reset of Sugar Rush. Vanellope, all done up in her glittering princess dress, was launched into the air on the slide and discarded those stuffy robes for her sleek mint and cream suit, landing in her handmade cart with a soft crinkle of her skirt. All the racers steeled themselves for that beginning boost once the light turned green, and none other was more ready to go than the sixteenth racer hidden in the far corner.

Choko Pockystix was a remnant of the Japanese version of Sugar Rush, when they all spoke a different language and had five fingers. She was intended to be an unlockable character, but when Turbo came and changed the code, she had been wiped out by the virus. Now, she wasn't taking any chances—she was _going_ to race, and there wasn't anything anyone else could do about it.

The light turned green and half the racers boosted ahead of the rest, Choko finding herself behind The Swizz and Crumbelina. The long stretch of track was to their advantage, but the giant bubblegum balls were their undoing. She snagged a power up cube and launched a pocky javelin towards Taffyta, pinning her to the track and allowing Choko to advance into 6th. The race up the cake was tougher, Choko just barely edging out Candle before she began to blow up the whole track, but then she boosted past Pollipop and flew father than the others over the jump, powering her way into 4th.

By the time she reached the ice cream mountains Lemonetta and Marzipanne were out for her blood, but she crashed through the barricade onto the hidden track and into 1st place. She was burning up the sour patch track, the finish line was ahead and she was going to win, she was going to exist and race and it was going to be wonderful.

Vanellope teleported in front of her and grinned her way, but Choko didn't waver. There was less than 200 feet left and Bubblebetty was coming in for a sudden victory; let her take 3rd or 2nd, Choko was getting 1st even if she had to alter the code to do so.

A flash of blue, the burn of a sweet seeker, and Choko took 1st place seconds before Vanellope and Bubblebetty burst their way through, followed by Lemonetta, Marzipanne, Candle, Sour Apple and Pollipop. The nine avatars of the day were chosen and the crowd cheers were deafening, especially from the chocolate-dipped pocky people in the sixteenth grandstand. Choko cheered along with them, and the racers set themselves up for the first quarter, Choko in the front with the others where she _belonged._

* * *

When it was all said and done, when the arcade opened and gamers swarmed Sugar Rush to play the new and improved avatars and all of the characters flourished under the attention and freedom from Turbo's manipulation, Vanellope von Schweetz wasn't the only racer to benefit from Sugar Rush's reset.


	2. What Has Been Left Behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which not everything is as sweet as it should be in the land of Sugar Rush.

"Hey Choko, what does -chan mean?"

Choko looked up from her sweet cracker dashboard. The arcade had just closed and the racers now had the rest of the night to prepare for the Random Roster Race; Choko herself was planning to swing by the Bakery and get more frosting for her cart. But Candle had an honest question, and she replied, "In Japan, Candle-chan, people add these...so they mean Ms. or Mr. basically. And -chan is how you speak to a friend or an girl who's young, so everyone is -chan here. Except Vanellope-hime, whose a Princess and -hime basically means Princess."

"Oh. But isn't she our President now?"

"...yes, but I'm programmed to call her Vanellope-hime. And I don't know what the right word for President is; maybe someone should add that in my code." They shared a small giggle, Candle playing with the chips in her hair. "Do they bother you?"

"Wha—oh, no I'm just playing with them. I think it's one of my idle animations or something." Candle paused, then smiled brightly. "You're a really good racer, Choko. I wonder why no one ever unlocked you before."

Choko sighed before staring off at the vanilla cream castle rising in the east. "That Turbo erased me when he altered the imported content by taking over King Candy."

"King Candy?" Vanellope joined their group, scrunching up her eyebrows. "I thought he just made that up to take over Sugar Rush."

"No, he was an extra from the Japanese version like me." Choko noticed the surprise on their faces and adjusted the pocky stick keeping her raspberry pin in place. "It's a long story, Vanellope-hime. We should get everyone else too, in case they have questions." Vanellope then called for all the racers to assemble at her castle before speeding off, Candle and Choko following; Choko figured that her trip to the Bakery could be postponed for a while.

* * *

Jubileena offered a piece of almond cake to Sour Apple before turning back to the main discussion. Everyone was seated around a giant table in what Jubileena guessed was the castle's main dining hall, and while it was spacious enough to race around in the atmosphere seemed very stifled, thanks to what Choko had to say. "Ok, so let me get this straight—King Candy was going to be a boss?"

"Well, not exactly." Choko traced the white racing stripe on her pink and chocolate kimono before elaborating, "You see, the North American and European Sugar Rush is really different than the Japanese Sugar Rush, like the difference between Nintendo's Super Famicon and the SNES but even more. In Japan, Sugar Rush was a 1-player game, where over here it's intended to be 2-player. Because over there you couldn't race with a friend, the Japanese version was designed with a story mode, where the player would race with Vanellope-hime to beat all the different characters of the tracks in races. Then when she won all the cups, she would advance to the boss in the castle, where she would race the evil King Candy to become Queen of Sugar Rush. The programmers took that all out when they wanted to make the game 2-player, and only left me in as an unlockable character and King Candy as a cameo."

Everyone was silent, and Choko shifted awkwardly at the attention. "Turbo took over the NPC and then the rest of Sugar Rush, I guess."

"...that's just terrible." The racers laughed awkwardly at Marzipanne's statement, and Choko sat down to stuff a sweet bun on her mouth. "B-But he's gone, right Choko? He's not gonna take over again?"

"Well, we'll have to check the code to see if the NPC is still part of the game." Taffyta then turned towards Vanellope, who seemed slightly nauseous at the thought of ever having to race King Candy again. "Do you know like, how to do that?"

She frowned, then perked up. "Sour Bill should know! Ok, this is what we're gonna do. First, we finish this tea party because these red velvet cupcakes are really good." Nobody could argue with that; the royal bakery was much better than their own homemade goods. "Then I'm gonna go check the code. Choko, you know a lot more than anyone else, will you help?"

"Erf cersh, Vernerope-himeh." Choko blushed as her words were muffled by the sweet bun.

"Sweet! Ok, next order of business: somebody pass the vanilla bean paste."

* * *

Vanellope was totally not freaking out.

She and Choko were being led by Sour Bill, who seemed even more sour than usual, down a stark white hall deep within the castle. Blue wires pulsed on the walls, leading up to a giant Nintendo controller, which the President snorted at. "I thought we were developed by Tobikomi."

"Well, they're a second-party developer under Nintendo, so I guess that works out." They shrugged at Choko's theory, then tensed as Sour Bill punched in the Konami Code ("...ok, that makes no sense at all") which revealed a dark room filled with glowing strands of code.

"You'll need these." Sour Bill reluctantly held up two strings of licorice, and the two racers dove into the darkness. They took a moment to orient themselves and stop hitting each other in the zero gravity well, before swimming into the mess. "Be careful."

"Ok Choko, where's the Japanese stuff?" Vanellope's eyes were wide with awe as she saw the very lifeblood of Sugar Rush. If she wanted to she could even open someone's code and see what's inside, even change it around a bit. She shuddered at the thought.

"Ok, there's the character models—hey, there's you, Vanellope-hime!—so I'm...over here!" They floated over to Choko's box, and Vanellope noticed how the code in their area was in both English and Japanese text. They searched for any sign of King Candy, but only a dangling thread leading out into space indicated that he ever existed. Vanellope led the thread back into a code box, and the circuit was complete, Choko flashing slightly before wincing. "Ok, there's no chance of him ever coming back. I could feel the code for King Candy being locked out of the system."

Vanellope sighed with relief, then cocked her head. "What's this?"

There was a code box floating freely amongst the threads that they hadn't noticed before, and Choko widened her dark brown eyes. "That's code for the boss level. Vanellope-hime...you don't have a track, do you?"

"No...wait, that's it. I never was supposed to have one because in the original Sugar Rush I had to beat King Candy for the castle!" Vanellope then searched for the castle's data, dragging the code along with her. "If...if I add it to the castle, what do you think will happen?"

"I think that since you're not a boss but you've "defeated" King Candy since he doesn't exist, the castle becomes your track and will be added to normal gameplay." Choko began to grin as the implications grew. "You're going to have your own track!"

"Well I certainly deserve it!" They laughed, then held their breath as Vanellope opened the castle's code and merged the two boxes together. Lights flashed and Vanellope fizzled for a moment, then she began to squeal. "Oh, it worked! I  _know_  it worked, I can feel it in my code!" They high-fived each other before examining the rest of the code. "Do you think we should change anything else?"

"I don't know what else was dummied out with the import..." Choko watched Vanellope drift off to a darker corner in the code sphere, the President's eyes growing wider. "What did you find?"

"...what's a mirror?"

* * *

Rancis stared out over the blue raspberry ocean, squinting to see farther off into the horizon. He, Gloyd and The Swizz were off on the farthest edge of Sugar Rush they could access, trying to find the actual boundary of their world. After Vanellope and Choko returned from the code well, they were shaken by what they had found.

After all, the thought that they and everything else had been cloned was more unsettling than the idea of palette swaps.

They had always known that their Sugar Rush cabinet had two seats; it was a 2-player game, just as Choko explained, But even when two players were active and not fighting against each other, they gave it no mind; if they couldn't tell, what was the point of worrying. Then again, they didn't know that Turbo was manipulating their game, either. "Gloyd, do you see anything?"

"Just a whole lot of cotton candy clouds. Swizz?"

"Same here." He seemed more concerned than the others, but then again his best friend was a former palette swap so he knew the ramifications of cloning better than Rancis or Gloyd. "If we're mirrored on the other side, are they looking for us right now?"

Gloyd shuddered. "That's freaky, and my track's all about Halloween!"

Rancis adjusted his peanut butter hat and turned away from the coast. "Well, we're not getting anything done looking at nothing. I'm going to go check out the new castle track, anyone else wanna come?"

"Sure." They followed Rancis toward Vanellope's castle, which was now accessible by the main roads. Rancis had to admit, that part of the whole King Candy mess was cool—there was nothing sweeter than a new place to race—but the mirrored world still bothered him. What if The Swizz was right, and Mirror-Rancis was off to the castle as well? What if the whole cy-bug disaster happened over there too; could people from other video games be mirrored as well? What if the cy-bugs were still there? The thought of Mirror-Rancis getting eaten by a bug made Rancis swerve slightly, his hands sweating.

No, it was fine, he told himself as the castle with its doors wide open loomed ahead. People would notice if one side of the console was broken, and gamers had played Sugar Rush nonstop this past day. It was just a scary thought, but even when he felt himself get ready to leave Gloyd and The Swizz in the dust, the image of Vanellope—not their President Princess Vanellope, but lonely and miserable glitch Vanellope—left alone to be destroyed in a mirror world stayed with him.

* * *

Bubblebetty cheered as she sped past Pollipop and Marzipanne into the finish line, Lemonetta clocking their times. "That's 3:05:35 for Bubblebetty, 3:05:68 for Marzipanne and 3:06:00 for Pollipop. If you work on your drifting Pollipop, you'll gain an early lead in the race."

"I know, it's just weird because my cart's not the same as before." They all nodded at her statement; being palette swaps for so long, they had become used to using the same carts as other racers. Now the whole dynamic had been turned on its head. "I'm heading down to the Bakery later; wanna come?"

"Let's make a race out of it!" Marzipanne clapped her hands; ever since she had finally gotten onto the roster she wanted to race all the time, just to revel in being a top tier racer for once. "Ooh, I'm gonna add banana yellow to my bumper so I'm even faster and shinier than before and—ooh! some fondant strawberries and more almonds and..."

Pollipop shook her head; if she could move her feet as fast as she could flit through sentences, she'd be better off as a DDR avatar. "Let's go before the arcade opens again; I always lose track of time in that minigame." The four raced off towards the Bakery after saluting the doughnut cops, and Pollipop let her mind wander. "I remember once when I was an avatar, a gamer had me go to the Bakery and bake a cart. He had spot-on precision, gave me all the best sprinkles way at the top."

"Lucky! When a gamer took me there my cart was nothing but purple frosting! Sure, the nitro was excellent, but I couldn't turn to save my life!"

"Adorabeezle once went there and came out with this giant beast of 18 wheels—I didn't even know you could add that many!"

"I once had the fastest cart I've ever been in; we beat everyone that day, even Taffyta and Ki-Turbo." Lemonetta paused, then asked, "Where do all the carts go after the gamer switches avatars?"

They were silent the rest of the way to the Bakery, before Bubblebetty finally admitted, "I don't know. I guess the code's just lost, like it's reset." They pulled into the chamber of frosting for touch-ups on established carts, Bubblebetty fixing the rainbow of berets keeping her pigtails in place. "It'd be nice to keep the carts after someone makes them; I had a gamer always come back and make the same cart over and over..."

"Reset, huh..." Pollipop narrowed her dark cola eyes. "I don't like the sound of that."

* * *

Vanellope loved to skulk about Diet Cola Mountain, especially the finished version. The track twisted upwards and swooped down to launch the racers up the strawberry wafer bridge into a minefield of Mentos stalactites, and down into spiraling tunnels deep into the nut fudge and pretzel earth before they were spat out again. She kinda envied Pollipop for such an awesome track, although she was growing to love her castle more and more every time she teleported through it. She used this skill set to set herself up on an overhanging ledge, using her perch to ponder what she'd found in the game's code. "Pretty cool, isn't it?"

"You'd know, right?" She smiled at Pollipop who made her way to her little spot, and they watched the cola springs bubble below for a while. "...so what was it like? Being a palette swap, I mean?"

"It was ok, I guess. Better than nothing..." Pollipop winced at the memory of Vanellope being chased into the limits of Sugar Rush by the racers, but Vanellope simply nodded and waved the bad memory away. "And since I was a Minty—I mean, Sour Appleblossom clone, I was a pretty decent racer. But I was just that: a pretty decent racer who couldn't do anything that Sour Apple could already do. I would have to sleep in her track since I didn't have one, and unlike Lemonetta I didn't have a best friend, just other racers to talk with." Pollipop gazed up at the Mentos, swinging her legs. "I couldn't even leave unless Sour Apple left, and she never did."

"Wait, you couldn't leave the game either?"

Pollipop nodded. "It was like being chained to her; where she went I had to go too, since my programming was dependent on hers. Sugar Rush is huge so it's not that big of a deal, but I always wanted to see more, all of the other games with new tracks of their own. But I couldn't go past the bridge, so I stayed."

Vanellope paled, remembering how she too had been kept back by the barrier. "When the cy-bugs came, did you get out?"

"Yeah. Sour Apple rounded us up—me, her and Lemonetta—and made sure we could get out. She wasn't that terrible to me, I need to thank her for that..."

They were silent, the only noise being the soft broiling of the cola. "Just imagine if you were Taffyta's clone."

"Or Rancis's."

"Or Crumbelina's."

"Or Turbo's!"

They burst into laughter, leaning on each other to try and stay balanced in their little spot.

* * *

The racers lined up for the first quater of the day. This time Vanellope, Choko, Taffyta, Gloyd, Jubileena, Marzipanne, Lemonetta and The Swizz were up as the avatars, and all sixteen racers revved their engines in excitement. There were still questions to be answered, but as the first player picked out her avatar, they set it aside and geared up for their number one purpose: to race.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that wasn't too confusing; I brought forth a lot of theories about Sugar Rush and the games in the arcade in general. To be more specific about the mirror world: Sugar Rush is one game cabinet and console with two ports. Were it separate, there would be a whole different Sugar Rush that never had a Turbo, and that's not the angle I'm coming for here. Only the first (or 1-player) port has the actual code and characters in it, while the second port is just a mirror of the first; whatever happens in the first outside of the racing happens in the second, and the only difference is when the game is active. Then the mirror acts like an identical but different console, connected to the first if the two players are racing each other.
> 
> I bet that an actual game programmer would think my theory is retarded XD but I hope you enjoyed :D


	3. What Has Been Forgotten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which bittersweet memories are digested.

Crumbelina laughed as Marzipanne fake-swerved and boosted into a fondant tree. There had been a very inexperienced gamer that day, probably a five year old won over by their colorful console, and poor Marzipanne had been crashing into the scenery and racing off into the far distance all day; the only person who had enjoyed the madness more than the giggling racers was Marizpanne herself. Strange sense of humor, she had. "Is—hah!—was that the worse gamer you've ever had?"

"Not even!" Marzipanne reversed out of the tree and back onto the road. "At least this one knew how to drive forward; I once had someone just go in reverse all day!"

They giggled as they drove off to Crumbelina's track, avoiding giant cookies that would roll from chocolate chip hillsides and try to flatten them. Parking by Crumbelina's little graham cracker house, they skipped to the door and laughed harder when Crumbelina slipped on a peanut butter chip. "I remember that Taffyta once had a terrible gamer. She was so sour after that day, her eight-day winning streak got blown to bits when her genius of a driver thought it was a great idea to drive like an old grandma!"

Marzipanne snorted into her cup of milk, then bounced on the couch. "Ooh, Adorabeezle found three new tracks once when her gamer kept crashing into the walls. I wonder if my track has some hidden things—ooh, and she glitched through a wall and was stuck so bad the gamer had to restart his game!"

Crumbelina paused, then grinned widely. "I bet there's whole sorts of tracks out there for us to find. President Vanellope found a whole new level for her castle; whose to say that there isn't more hidden boss tracks?"

"Let's go exploring!" And then they were off, pushing each other over in the small race to their carts. By the end of their adventure they did find two tracks hidden inside of Crumbelina's Caramel Cookie Canyon, and they wondered whether or not they were hidden intentionally.

* * *

"Ok, I'm calling this tea party to order!"

All of the racers were assembled in Vanellope's dining hall again, bubbling over with questions and demands about their tracks. Ever since Crumbelina and Marzipanne spread the news, at least two dozen more hidden paths and tunnels and curves had been found hidden behind the walls of Sugar Rush; the former glitch knew a bit about dummied out content, and the whole situation stank like two month old milk. "Either Turbo did a lot of damage we weren't aware of, again, or the programmers didn't intend for us to find all these...can they be called bonus tracks?"

"I followed all of mine and they all led back to the main path, so I'm guessing they're not." Many of the racers nodded in agreement with Candle.

"But one of mine led to nowhere, like an extra finish line or something." Jubileena's statement made the racers argue amongst themselves, debating dummied out minigames and remnants from the Japanese Sugar Rush's boss battles.

"That's right—Choko, weren't there special tracks to race characters on to beat those levels after the main races?"

"Yes, in Japan the gamer would use Vanellope-hime to race three times on any given track, then if they finished first they had the chance to say, race Taffyta-chan one on one on her track. If they beat Taffyta-chan, then they would advance to the next track and character to beat, all the way up to the castle." Choko then frowned. "When they exported the game they must've taken all that content out as well."

"But what about the branching pathways? They didn't seem like boss battle material."

Choko bit her lip, then suddenly stood up, her face pale as vanilla. "I remember—Turbo's virus, it nearly destroyed everything when he tried to delete Vanellope-hime's code!"

"What?!" The table was in uproar, Vanellope sinking into her chair; Ralph had neglected to tell her that piece of information. Gloyd spoke up over the voices, "He...he tried to kill her?"

"I...I remember lots of screaming." Choko shuddered, then turned towards her president. "Vanellope, didn't you say that Sour Bill was there when Turbo altered our memories?"

"SOUR BILL!" The aforementioned candy ball scuttled into the hall, Vanellope balling her fists. "What exactly happened when Turbo tried to take over?"

He gulped, aware of sixteen pairs of eyes glaring his way. "I...it was right after we were plugged in, but before we were turned on..."

* * *

_Sour Bill puttered around the castle, making sure everything was in place for the first race of the day. Even he was fighting down a tiny little smile; the most bitter of sourballs couldn't help but be excited to be plugged in for the first time. Suddenly a voice cut into his thoughts. "Ah, I was looking all over for you."_

_He turned to see an old man with puffy pants and a tiny crown on his bulbous head, and he struggled to make a connection. When it did, it was with a fizzle of servitude towards his...king. "King Candy! I...what are—"_

_"Never mind that. I need your help!" He lead Sour Bill down a blinding white hall, and the green candy was filled with apprehension. Why was...King Candy trying to alter the code? The game hadn't been turned on yet, there wasn't any programming errors to be fixed—"Hold onto this rope. I have an issue to take care of."_

_He did as he was told **(why though, he wasn't his...king, Vanellope was his princess, why was he doing this)** , and after a moment of silence he could hear muted screaming, screaming from all the corners of Sugar Rush, and before a terrible clamp came down over his mind, he swore he saw his...king flicker in a flash of mutated red code._

* * *

"I swear I didn't know! I don't know...I don't know why, but I had to." Sour Bill was trembling, absently noting that the former recolors and Vanellope were shivering in their seats.

"I believe you." Choko swallowed, fiddling with her obi. "He was designed to be the king of the castle, so you were programmed to listen to him, even if he was dummied out."

"Do you remember what happened?"

Choko gulped at Sour Apple's question. "I...when you're an unlockable character, you exist in this weird limbo...

* * *

_Choko was in a dark place. Existed was a better word, as she was blind and deaf to the world, waiting for her code to be unlocked an made a part of her game. However, she could still feel the data of Sugar Rush and its contents, as if she were floating in the darkness holding its programming together. The sudden fritz of being plugged in felt so amazing that she wanted to cheer, and one by one she could feel each character become part of the system. In her English/Japanese corner, she could feel King Candy beside her, both existing in the dark place, both patiently waiting to live._

_But then Choko felt a wrongness slip into Sugar Rush with only a crackle of static signalling its arrival. She tried to feel it out in the space between the code, but King Candy's sudden jerk alerted her too late._

_He was struggling to try and beat off the wrongness, and she could feel the virus digging into the imported content around her. She tried to move away, to try and help King Candy, but the free falling limbo was an illusion, and she was helpless as she felt his data being corrupted beyond repair. There was a muted burst, as if something had ruptured, and then the wrongness was moving towards...the castle, where the softly pulsing code of the castle keepers were._

_Choko tried to scream for somebody to stop him, but the virus had King Candy's form, so anyone in the castle were bound to his programming, and then the virus was back. It was stronger, and she could feel strands of code, the lifeblood of Sugar Rush, being corrupted as he floated directly in the code well. Why, what was he...Choko needed to gasp as she felt the virus attack Princess Vanellope's code. She writhed in agony as she felt his tear out her connection to the game, and then she gaped in horror as she felt other characters being twisted and torn out as well. With every connection and pointer he tore out, somebody disappeared into the darkness, and she could do nothing but listen to terrible, wailing screams echo in the damaged code._

_With a trembling wail Vanellope-hime was torn free and Choko couldn't feel her anymore. All she could feel was the virus dragging the angry red code box of King Candy to the center of the code, ripping out pieces of code from various characters and levels to add to his own power. Sour Appleblossom's and Minty Candlezaki's coding was crossed over, the game had to create palette swaps to make up for the lost racers, and a sudden flash of agony indicated that the virus had spread to Choko's code._

_She struggled as hard as King Candy but it was no use, and she felt something pull at her. She was being dragged into darkness, a whole new darkness that there was no escape from, and her mouth opened in a silent scream as she was sucked into a flickering oblivion._

* * *

"...and his virus ended up deleting my own code. I remember screaming...then nothing until the game was reset."

Everyone was silent save spare sniffles from Marzipanne and Bubblebetty;  _they_  remembered screaming, they remembered  _pain_  as something destroyed them from the inside out before the game saved their programming by cloning them to whoever was available. Then they didn't remember anything at all.

Vanellope suddenly stood up, eyes burning. "Why didn't he just delete me like he wanted? Why would he just leave me as a g-glitch?"

"He couldn't have hoped to delete you, Vanellope-hime." Choko glared at a bowl of popcorn. "Even after the programmers changed Sugar Rush for the North American and European releases, you're still the primary racer of the game. To delete you is like deleting the boundary of the game—it just can't be done without breaking the game beyond repair. Ripping out the pointers to your code was all he could do."

"...could he have deleted us?" Rancis was begging Choko to say no, but her silence brought cries of horror from the characters.

"Had he not tried to delete Vanellope and lock away our memories, the game would have accepted him into the code since King Candy was intended to exist in a form, and I don't think we would've known anything was wrong unless we took a look at his coding." Sour Bill's statement made everyone pale further, pushing away their tea and cakes. No one was in the mood for sweets. "Luckily for us, he shot himself in the foot and that Wreck-it Ralph was able to help bring him down."

"I like him." They all turned towards Marizpanne. "We should bake him a cake."

The absurdness caused the racers to break into hysterical laughter, their fears and horror converted into joy for that moment. Vanellope ordered Sour Bill to alter the royal kitchens, demanding that they "don't make him a chocolate cake, or I'll have their heads!" before turning back towards the tea party. "I think we have a lot more to do than just baking. Choko, you're the one who knows this code next so I'm going to need your help."

"What are you planning, President Vanellope?" Candle cocked her head as her leader climbed onto the table.

"Obviously there's a lot about Sugar Rush that has been changed by Turbo, and I intend to fix that." Vanellope gestured out to her citizens. "I need you to take stock of all the hidden bugs, glitches, extra tracks and dummied out content in your tracks. I also need you to remember all of the Bakery carts your gamers have made—I've been in the junkyard, and none of the carts there match what you've described. Once you do all of this, come back and tell me and Choko everything you know." She grinned widely, looking every part of Sugar Rush's number one Princess-President. "We're taking our programming back!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope the theories presented here were understandable; after pondering the existence of King Candy I've come to the conclusion that others in this fandom have come to: he was intended to exist and then Turbo screwed it all up. Really, had he not tried to kill Vanellope I'm pretty sure the secret would've stayed under wraps much longer, but he's an attention hog so he screwed himself over. Justice, I suppose.
> 
> Getting back on track, I hope you enjoyed the chapter!


	4. What Has Been Discovered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Vanellope and Choko dip into the wonderful world of code altering.

_I found fifteen extra tracks in total on my level, and I think most of them were supposed to be there but got corrupted. -Gloyd O._

_So there's this weird bug where if you hit this wall by the finish line you get sucked under the scenery and bump around the boundary. -Taffyta M._

_In my track if you try and access any of the dummied out tracks, you're insta-killed five seconds in and put back on the main path. Is that supposed to happen? -Bubblebetty G._

_My level keeps trying to turn back into peppermint if you stall on the road for too long, and Candle's having similar problems with her textures. -Sour A._

Vanellope tried to sort out the information into piles, chewing on a vanilla bean. Her own track would try and load her character sprite with a white helmet and goggles, and sometimes she swore that Ki-Turbo's old cart was following her around. It was getting kinda freaky, and the thought that it was going to get worse before getting better made her sour in the stomach. She looked up to see Choko writing down the complaints onto a fondant board. "Is your track acting weird too?"

"There's a lot of boundary problems, but luckily none of the gamers have fallen into the scenery yet." Choko's bright green hair was down from its usual bun, as she was gnawing on her pocky stick. "And the text on my grandstand is still in Japanese so there's a localization issue."

Vanellope sighed and motioned for Sour Bill to bring her more notes. "All of the former palette swaps keep dying when looking for overlooked content. Any idea why?"

"I suppose that they're the most damaged characters in the game, save yourself, so the game is still getting used to their presence." Choko turned towards her leader. "You said that your level keeps trying to load extra data in your model?"

"Huh—oh yeah! I think it's from my original design, but I thought that was done with when I lost my hoodie." Vanellope wiggled her gloved fingers. "Ralph said I looked like this on the side of the console so I don't see what the programming's problem is."

"I think we should access the concept art that was carried over, to see what kinds of textures and designs were either changed or corrupted." Choko yawned. "Until we find the whole extent of the damage there's little else we can do."

"Yeah..." Vanellope hated the uselessness she was feeling. Sure, it was sweet that they were taking back Sugar Rush, but there was just so much damage that Turbo did. She hoped, with a bitter taste to her thoughts, that he felt the same uselessness when the eruption of Diet Cola Mountain deleted him for good. Pressing in the candy barrettes in her hair, she resumed her logging of her racers' complaints.

_When I found the boss track, the game tried to load some game data or something, because the whole thing glitched until I was reset back by the start. -Adorabeezle W._

_The extra tracks are all made of double stripes so it's impossible to explore them without falling into Nesquik sand or melted lollipop goo. -Swizzle M._

_After I was reset after finding this dummied out track the whole level was teal textured. I had to reset it by leaving then coming back, but that's a big bug. -Lemonetta C._

_Sometimes the entire level reverts back to its unprogrammed state that you found it in. Do you think that the game doesn't really know that we're here? -Pollipop F._

* * *

All of the former clones were assembled at the castle by express demand of President-Princess Vanellope. Their former models had volunteered to explore the tracks for them, the risk of dying over and over was so great. Marzipanne didn't even respawn after falling through the track until Adorabeezle came and fell through herself, forcing a mass reset of the level; the poor girl was still a bit jumpy. "Is our code broken?"

"No, if that was the case you'd be glitching all over the place." Vanellope paced in front of them, her sparkling white helmet appearing on her head, much to her apprehension. "Choko and I are going to look at the connections to your programming, in case there's a crossed wire or something." Once the goggles flickered onto her face she stamped her foot. "And maybe I'll figure out why the game's trying to turn me into a King Candy rip-off."

"Original design." Choko tripped into their group holding giant posters and papers, chocolate staining some of the edges. "There's code for the goggles and helmet that was subverted when Turbo screwed up the game, as you can see here..."

The six racers looked at the collage of pictures that Choko laid out on the floor. Bubblebetty's hair was less colorful than on the page, and the strings of multicolored bubblegum around her neck and wrists were missing as well. Pollipop's hair was down like Sour Apple's instead of a side ponytail as intended, and her red racing stripes had been turned white. Lemonetta's cart was missing lemon fruit wheels, and her yellow pillbox hat had been lost in translation. Choko had sweet red bean colored hair instead of green, and with hanami dango pins instead of raspberry. Marzipanne was the only character to have her intended design, but her cart was shaped like a cornucopia instead of the standard racing cart. "My god, we're beautiful! What happened?"

"I don't know..." Vanellope had the most amount of designs proposed then axed by either the programmers or Turbo. Her hair was going to be red then purple then black, her hair was in at least 10 different up-dos, she was wearing gray then pink then green then mint, her eyes were purple and black and green, her princess dress went through 5 cuts and colors before ending up as her frilly pink parachute, and King Candy's cart was her own. Vanellope felt overwhelmed by it, especially since her sprite then deiced to load all of the different designs at once. She fizzed and glitched, ending up in one of the mint colored crowns, the gray baby doll shirt, her old mint and vanilla swirl stockings, and bright purple eyes framed by three red ponytails. Everyone stared in shock. "Umm...well the data is still there, so there's a start."

"Ah. We should look into that."

* * *

Choko tapped Vanellope's code box, conscious of the little time left before the arcade opened. The Princess had been glitching ever since accessing all the spare code left over in her character model, and Choko was left to try and sort something out before the first quarter. To her dismay, her character data had been corrupted when Turbo tore out the connections, resulting in her "glitch" clothing data and the reactivation of her former designs. "Sour Bill, how much time do we have left before the Random Roster Race?"

"The racers are assembling at this very moment."

"そうですか(Soudesuka)...ok, I retained Japanese statements, apparently. I'm bowing out of today, I need to make sure that the gamers don't find the dummied content. Just tie me to a pole or something." Sour Bill then left to preside over the race, leaving Choko to the tangled web of Vanellope's code. "Ok, she can't look like programming threw up over her costume...where is her racing data?"

Ready to tear out her hair in frustration, she picked the most coherent data and plugged it into the sprite. A submenu for costume changes opened up, showing eight possible data spaces with two (the gray baby doll in Vanellope's homemade cart and one of the mint princess dresses with the princess cart) filled. "Well, that solves one issue for now..." The corrupted data temporarily sorted out, she left Vanellope's data and floated to Sugar Rush's level code boxes, which were sparking ominously. She saw data for the avatars of the day being accessed by an outside party, and frantically swam towards the beginning tracks. If she failed here and gave cause for Mr. Litwak-sama to unplug Sugar Rush, she would never forgive herself.

* * *

Choko crawled out of the data well and laid quietly on the cold floor. For hours on end she had desperately made connections and discarded corrupted code, and judging by the activity thrumming through Sugar Rush's lifeblood little if any gamers had noticed. Thankfully the glitches involving boundaries had been easy to fix with a firm guiding hand, but textures were a nightmare; Adorabeezle had been altered pink in the heat of the moment, turning her into Nougestia Brumblestain. Choko changed her back but now Adorabeezle had that programming in as a costume switch, a concept that she really needed to talk to Vanellope about. But the floor was so solid, so nice...

Sour Bill found the imported racer snoring on the floor, and had one of the castle caretakers carry Choko up to a spare room. Rubbing his hard candy hands together, he glared at the data well before sealing it off.

Today had been incredibly stressful, especially since he understood the magnitude of Choko's actions. Messing with the code was an exhausting ordeal, between swimming in anti-gravity and trying to point out the tiny fissures and cracks in connections under harsh and pulsating light. And to do it for an entire Saturday was madness; he suspected that she may skive off Sunday as well.

Stalking back towards the main castle hub, he met the newly designed Vanellope waiting, worry etched onto her sugar-sweet face. "Choko has been taken care of, Miss President. I suggest that you take a break as well."

"But how can I when the code needs to be fixed?" She gripped onto her sparsely decorated hair, violet eyes growing wide. "My character sprite has bugs, Sour Apple turned into Sticky Wipplesnit for a moment, Bubblebetty's entire track was flashing—at this rate we're gonna be unplugged and all our hard work will mean nothing!" She paused, then bit her bottom lip. "What if Turbo broke our game for good?"

Sour Bill hesitated, then patted her tiny hand, bringing forth the advising role set inside his programming. "Tomorrow is Sunday, which ends earlier. You can take care of these problems then; for now you should take care of yourself. Don't you have a cake waiting for that Wreck-It Ralph?"

"The cake! Ooh, I bet it's done and it better not have any chocolate or so help me..." She ran towards the kitchen, Sour Bill scurrying after her. A giant cake larger than two of Vanellope was waiting, decorated with replicas of Vanellope's handcrafted medal and flavored with all the best kinds of cake excluding chocolate and the various velvets. "I better get this to him before it grows stale—to the bridge!"

The cake was loaded onto the back of Vanellope's cart and tied down securely, Sour Bill following to make sure that his Princess/President wasn't killed on her first excursion out of Sugar Rush. That would screw everything up. She raced up the sour rainbow bridge to the boundary, then slammed on the brakes, the sourball nearly flying out of the cart. "Miss President?"

Vanellope gulped, then slowly inched towards the boundary, before gunning it with eyes tightly shut. They slipped through to the cord tunnel without ceremony, and she gasped. "I...I did it. I can leave the game!"

"Of course you can, you're the primary racer of Sugar Rush..." Sour Bill trailed off as Vanellope sped down the cord into GCS, laughing wildly and babbling on about how she was a real racer and it was so amazing and nothing could stop her ever again. Remembering how as a glitch she had been locked in their console, Sour Bill sank in his seat. Ki-Turbo had nearly destroyed her without a second thought, and Sour Bill's implicit agreement made his inner layers fill with guilt. What kind of royal adviser would turn against his princess in such a manner, Sour Bill didn't know, but when she sped down the connection to Fix-It Felix, Jr., he vowed to never be as distasteful towards his ruler ever again.

* * *

Ralph had been surprised to see Vanellope outside of her game with an entirely new look, but had taken it in stride when she explained how they were experimenting with Sugar Rush's faulty coding. She then announced that they were having a cake party, showing off the giant layered cake made just for her friend. She had smiled when he nearly teared up, and demanded to see what kind of dump he lived in. She was not amused. "How are we gonna have a party when there's no furniture?"

"Well..."

"Hey Felix! Yeah you, with the hammer!" Vanellope chased after the hero of Ralph's game, the tiny ponytail on the top of her head bouncing with every step. She tackled Felix, pouting with irritation. "You got a house in that building?"

"W-Why yes, Miss...Vanellope, you changed your hair!"

"Why thank you, I rather like it actually." Vanellope fluffed her black locks, then stamped her foot. "But this isn't the time for flattery, Hammer-man. Ralph and I are having a cake party and he doesn't have a house so we need yours. Keys, please."

"U-Umm I don' think—"

"That's fine, I'll do all the thinking for ya! Come on Ralphie, before the cake cools!"

Ralph laughed as Vanellope raced her cart with the cake and the little sourball into the lobby of the apartments, helping Felix to his feet. Felix fixed his hat, blue eyes wide with shock. "Is she always like this?"

"You have no idea." Listening to the chaos, he grinned sheepishly. "If you fix all the damage I'll share some of the cake with you."

* * *

The lifeblood of Sugar Rush flickered and pulsated within its well, programming and code fuctioning to keep its designated citizens and racers and scenery existing. But in the heart of the code a code box fizzled and crackled, before dimming entirely. This set off a chain reaction that wiped out nearly half of the code boxes in the well, the remaining programming glowing faintly in the giant backdrop of darkness.

In the living word thousands of screams echoed for a moment then were silenced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> そうですか translates into soudesuka, which is like "Is that so?"
> 
> If you look online for Vanellope's concept art you'll find the different costume switches employed here; I'd post links but I seem to have misplaced them. Oh well; the important thing to know here is that someone thing has gone horribly wrong :D


	5. What Has Been Destroyed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Vanellope learns just a bit more about Sugar Rush as an apocalypse descends on sugared wings.

Vanellope sped towards the opening of her game, Ralph and Felix perched on the back fin of her cart. There was only ten minutes left before the arcade would open, Vanellope skiving off Sunday's races to work on the code, and they were seeing her off since Sour Bill had left hours earlier. Vanellope giggled when Felix nearly fell off, making a mental note to figure out if their game had a tram for traveling in the cord. Turning to snark at the two, she didn't notice the shimmering veil until she rammed through it, her friends flying off as they rebounded against the boundary with a harsh smack. Braking her cart, she ran back to the two. "What just happened?"

"I don't know..." Ralph rubbed his head, then tapped the force field keeping him and Felix out of Sugar Rush. "Hey isn't this like—"

Vanellope suddenly glitched violently, screaming as the scenery behind her flashed and came apart by the pixels. Ralph tried to break through to help his friend, but was kept back despite his bashing. With a loud and painful beeping chime Vanellope fell to the trembling ground, back in her "default" white racing suit, and Sugar Rush loomed empty and gray behind her. "Wha..."

"Vanellope!" Felix scrambled against the barrier, but the bridge flickered and gave out beneath the girl and her cart, and she plummeted into the abyss, her screams echoing against that of her friends.

* * *

Groaning, Vanellope opened her eyes before screaming. In front of her was Taffyta frozen in her victory pose, jaw broken to open all the way to her chest. Her ice blue eyes were wide and unseeing, and a fizzing, choking sound left her mouth. Vanellope shook the taffy-colored racer, but all that did was cause Taffyta to glitch to the ground in three pieces. Shaking with horror, Vanellope backed away, before stopping abruptly.

She turned to find nothing, yet felt a hard and unflinching surface beneath a trembling hand. She stared at the ground to find a seam, and a faint shadow alerted her to the large chunk of boundary jutting out of the landscape. All around her was a large expanse of gray, darkening into nothingness at all horizons. Vanellope ran away from the glitched remains of Taffyta, bumping into boundary as she tried to find her cart and anyone else. Scattered around like debris were fragments of Sugar Rush; Vanellope recognized a glitched and broken lollipop tree, what was left of Snowanna, a large ramp to nowhere and the main theme of Sugar Rush was playing faintly, its sound stretched and mangled like a nightmare's lullaby. "Hello? Can anybody hear me?"

Nothing. Disorientated, she stumbled towards what she felt was the east, looking for any signs of her castle. She tripped over another piece of boundary, landing harshly against her palms. Sniffling, she looked up and crawled away on all fours, mind filled with horror. Her castle was floating in the air, a garbled mess of white and pink pixels that made her stomach churn at the _wrongness_. All of the castle staff were jutting out of the sides and broken poses, eyes blank and mouths distended in mockeries of screams. Sour Bill was stark against a spire, arms and legs pinwheeling without end and Vanellope understood where he had disappeared to. "What is this?"

"O-oooooooo-Ohai-haiyooooooo-o!"

Vanellope shrieked and spun around to face a glitching Choko, her hair crushed into her face and her legs facing backwards. She was waving and smiling, stuck in a looping animation from the original game. Afraid to touch her lest she fall apart like Taffyta, Vanellope fought back tears. "Choko, snap out of it! What's going on?!"

"O-ooooo-Oh-ooooo-" Choko suddenly screamed a terrible banshee wail that drove Vanellope to the ground, fingers scrambling against her ears to try and shut out the noise. Choko then reset back to her glitching welcome, waving to the far distance in a cut scene that didn't exist. Sniffling, the racer ran away from the wreckage of her castle, assaulted by more glitches and bugged items that made her brain want to black out and get away from whatever happened.

Vanellope suddenly froze in terror. The arcade was about to open, and Sugar Rush had crashed harder than her worst nightmares.

Crying out in despair, she tore at her hair and looked around desperately for something, anything, but there was nothing but regurgitated pieces of programming, and Vanellope sank to her knees to weep.

* * *

A loud fanfare broke through her sobbing and Vanellope raised her head. The announcer's voice echoed over the void, static breaking apart his speech into stilted pieces.

**"IN THE WOR—RLD OF SUGAR RUSH, THE KINGDOM IS HELD IN THE GRASP OF THE T—TERRIBLE KING CANDY! ONLY THE TRUE RULER, PRINCESS VANELLOPE VON SCHWEE—EETZ, CAN TAKE BACK HER KINGDOM THROUGH 16 CHA—ALLENGING RACES! DEF—FEAT THE OTHER RACERS, DE—EFEAT KING CANDY, AND TA—AKE BACK WHAT IS YOURS, STARTING RIGHT NO—OW!"**

The gray ground beneath her surged and Vanellope wept harder; someone had put in a quarter. What was left of the game glitched harder, the selection music screeching in broken chords, and Vanellope's cart materialized halfway in the ground. Wiping her eyes, she half-heartedly kicked the cookie wheel, stepping back when it reset itself. She felt a warmth spread from her gut, and then she was in her cart, a starting flag materializing. Her gamer seemed to realize that something was terribly wrong, because she was left idling, not bothering to stay in character as she hung her head. Mr. Litwak must've put the game out of order after a while, because the warmth left and the starting line sank into the ground, leaving Vanellope alone once more.

Shifting her cart into gear, she sped off towards a distance, letting salty tears flow. Something had happened to the code, that she knew for sure, and now they were on the fast track to getting unplugged. She might as well start packing, if she had things left to pack. Laughing hysterically at the mangled clump of Sour Apple and Candle floating in midair, Vanellope pulled over to vomit. Everything had gone wrong, and there wasn't even a bridge to escape the madness. She was going to die here, alone and abandoned like a miserable glitch. Covering her eyes with her shaking hands, Vanellope cried out, "W-What am I sup-possed to to n-now?"

Something flickered in the front of her vision, and she sniffled before looking up. Before her were eight large mirror shards, pieces of programming she had already forgotten about. In the mirrors' images were herself, all in different costumes and hairstyles and even eye color, but all sharing in their defeat. Wiping her eyes, she reached out to touch the closest mirror, which held her in the ratty hoodie and stocking she had worn for 15 years. But once they made contact, the mirror turned black and glitched red, making Vanellope scoot backwards. The ground began to burn, and Vanellope ran back to her cart, watching the glitched remains of Sugar Rush react just as the mirror did. "What?"

The mirror exploded, leaving behind the mirror image. She had dark mint skin and glowing red eyes on a demented face, just like the propaganda Turbo used before to keep Vanellope out of the hubs in her game. The Virus-Vanellope cocked her head, black hair glitching with mutated code, before storming her foot, red virus snaking under Vanellope's cart and pixelating it. Vanellope only had a moment to escape before her cart, the one she loved and adored because it was hers, was mutated in color and transferred back to Virus-Vanellope.

The images in the other mirror all shied away in fear, imitating Vanellope's absolute terror. Virus-Vanellope smirked, raising her hand to attack. Vanellope ran from the virus but there was Virus-Vanellope again, perched on every piece of corrupted data in the hollowed husk of Sugar Rush. Vanellope heard all 16 track themes mix together with her own personal fanfare, making a shrill cacophony that made the the small hairs on the back of her neck rise. The mirror images all screamed at Vanellope to run in layered, ghosting yells, and Vanellope tore off away from Virus-Vanellope, who was laughing.

The laughter swarmed around in Vanellope's brain, making her teleport to try and get away but it was still there, digging into her skin as if trying to burrow into her code. Ducking behind a large curve of boundary, Vanellope curled into a ball and gasped for air. Jubileena and Bubblebetty were lying a few feet away, digging their fingers through the ground and moving their mouths as if mumbling in blank eyed, twisted neck sleep. Then Virus-Vanellope spawned over their bodies, revving the engines of her cart. Vanellope ran off, avoiding a writhing mess of pixels that appeared to have once been a cluster of assorted fans, and willed the music to  _turn off_. It played louder.

She made her way into a large swatch of nothingness in the shadow of inside-out ice cream mountains, unable to stop shaking. Virus-Vanellope was out there, out for her blood, and she was helppless, just as she was helpless to try and fix Sugar Rush's programming after Turbo had defiled it beyond repair. Crawling on the ground, she tried to keep from crying miserably, flinching as a mirror shard showed herself with red hair. But the image was pointing at something to their left, and Vanellope turned, before clamping her hands over her mouth to keep from shouting.

The controller guarding the entrance to the code well was mounted on the ground, protected by a large swath of boundary with a large golden slot. Vanellope didn't dare try and touch it without the key or cartridge or code or whatever the heck it needed, so she crawled to the mirror. "Can you hear me?" The mirror was just an image again, following Vanellope's every move, but she only sighed and scooted up closer. "It's ok, I...I'm just happy you look normal." The sensation of Taffyta's pixels clumping in her hands before she fell to bits made Vanellope retch, shivering against the ground. "I...how do I fix this?"

The mirror didn't answer.

* * *

Virus-Vanellope crashed into the mirror from behind, causing it to fly into the air and sink itself into a wall of boundary. Vanellope ran off, panting in fear, but then she was rammed by the cart, screaming in pain as the virus permeated her code. She saw lights flash before her eyes, saw data glowing blue against Virus-Vanellope's sick red, until she was in the air, floating as if she were in the code well.

Orientating herself, she noticed that Virus-Vanellope was nowhere to be seen—in fact all the broken scenery was gone, leaving Vanellope circled by the seven mirrors from before. Each one had herself, with racing suits and princess dresses and carts modeled after the one she was given and the one that was taken, and they were all waiting to be selected. Vanellope snorted; what use what a menu for character switching when there was no game for the character?

**"IN THE WOR—RLD OF SUGAR RUSH—"**

The announcer was speaking again, this time without fanfare but now the words wrapped around Vanellope like a cocoon. She crossed her arms and bowed her head, wishing for someone to help.

**"—THE KINGDOM IS HELD IN THE GRASP OF THE T—TERRIBLE KING CANDY!—"**

Vanellope realized that King Candy never had a chance to live. Sure he was evil by design, but wasn't Ralph as well? What right did Turbo have to destroy King Candy, someone who could've been a snarker or a giant teddy bear or a voice of reason in all this madness? Why did he have to die just as Sugar Rush was dying?

**"—ONLY THE TRUE RULER, PRINCESS VANELLOPE VON SCHWEE—EETZ, CAN TAKE BACK HER KINGDOM—"**

Vanellope perked up at the sound of her name. She was the primary racer of Sugar Rush, wasn't she? She and King Candy racing to the death over control of Sugar Rush, princess against tyrant, good against evil, mano-a-mano.

**"—THROUGH 16 CHA—ALLENGING RACES! DEF—FEAT THE OTHER RACERS—"**

But there were no other racers, just whatever code they had left when Sugar Rush seized up and stroked out. By default she had beaten them all by being able to breathe.

**"—DE—EFEAT KING CANDY—"**

But King Candy was long gone because of Turbo's virus. Only the remnants of his murderer, taking the avatar of Virus-Vanellope, was left to poison the code.

**"—AND TA—AKE BACK WHAT IS YOURS—"**

Vanellope froze. That was it. Before in the cy-bug disaster, she had taken back her kingdom by finishing—and by virtue of being the only racer,  _winning_ —the race and resetting the game. By winning she had activated a key within the programming that saved Sugar Rush as far as it could go. It wasn't enough, not with the damage Turbo had done, but she was Princess Vanellope von Schweetz, Ruler of Sugar Rush. The game belonged to her, not Turbo or his virus or Virus-Vanellope—they were just bosses in her way to becoming queen. And bosses were always made to battle, to race to the death over control...

Her white helmet, sparkling with sugar crystals and iced with mint stars, spawned along with her white goggles, her vanilla cart waiting below. The mirror images changed to poses of victory, the golden racing cups switching back and forth between keys and cartridges and golden codes that spelled salvation.

Vanellope raised herself up from her defeated posture, lifting her chin to her reflections. She was the Princess, she was the best racer in the game, and if Virus-Vanellope wanted to fight so bad, so be it.

**"—STARTING RIGHT NO—OW!"**

* * *

Had anyone been able to see through the monitor of the out of order Sugar Rush, or game jump into the locked system, they would've seen two racers glare at each other in a desolate track devoid of any marked path or decoration. Blocky and pixelated characters laid in heaps in imitations of grandstands, some screaming in agony while others stared blankly ahead. The starting flags were jutting out in angles and the banner was heavily glitched, but the boss battle data had loaded successfully.

The girl on the left, sleek and shimmering in white and mint, was a stark contrast against the girl on the right, who flickered and surged with murderous red code, her stolen cart twisting upon itself like rotted cake. Both of them refused to break eye contact, even as the lights glitched down to green. With a scrambled blare of the background music they boosted off towards oblivion, the fate of Sugar Rush hanging in the balance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well how's that for a villain?
> 
> In the last chapter, the damage from Turbo was evident but his virus had stayed hidden until it finally surged forward and caused Sugar Rush's programming to essentially have a stroke, wiping out the characters save Vanellope but leaving the scenery intact; that's why Sour Bill kinda dropped off without a note and why Vanellope, Ralph and Felix didn't notice anything was wrong until the two outsiders were locked out of the game. Once Vanellope returned, the virus took down most of what was left in a giant overload, much like a seizure, and only corrupted data save Vanellope, who is really the linchpin of Sugar Rush, remained.
> 
> Also on the mirror: I explained earlier that the mirror was just filler for the second Sugar Rush console, but when the virus ended up breaking apart the mirror programming by creating Virus-Vanellope, it reformed around the only pure data left: Vanellope. Now the mirror acts as more or less clones of Vanellope in her alternate costumes for now.
> 
> The announcer is accessing the imported material, mainly the localized cutscene that would introduce the Japanese Sugar Rush's story mode had it not been dummied out. Not very impressive, I know, but I think it got the job done.


	6. What Has Been Fought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Vanellope faces off against her arch nemesis.

While the goggles kept her whipping bangs out of her eyes, Vanellope could feel the game's environment swirling and sucking around her. Gritting her teeth, she swerved to avoid a sudden dip of boundary, feeling the ground beneath her wheels shifting. Virus-Van was shrouded in an aura of mutated code, and wherever it went, it sucked in programming like a black hole; Vanellope wouldn't be surprised if it managed to consume Sugar Rush just like the cy-bugs tried to do.

Red whips of code flashed in front of her cart, latching onto a clump of pixels in the distance. Suddenly the clump was hurled towards Vanellope as Virus-Van laughed to the tune of the scratched and off-key music. Shifting her cart into a higher gear, Vanellope made a sharp left turn to avoid colliding with the clump, wincing as it exploded behind her into fragmented code. To her right, Virus-Van was revving forwards towards a large ramp. It held its hand forward, and boost pads were spawned in her path, glitching red and probably super charged. Vanellope wanted to scream 'Cheater!', but snorted instead; of course Virus-Van would be cheap and do that.

Virus-Van used the boost pads to power itself up the ramp and farther ahead, but as it rocketed into the blank sky, Vanellope noticed the devastated programming left behind. It flickered and glitched, and right before she left it behind in the dust, she saw it disappear into nothingness. Vanellope laughed to herself at how the virus couldn't even create functioning program without screwing it up, before finding herself coasting up in the air on a large arch of boundary. Mirror reflections below cheered her on, yelling something in garbled English-Japanese that was lost under the din of the background music.

The boundary ended an abrupt cliff, and Vanellope was falling freely, Virus-Van just ahead. Narrowing her eyes, Vanellope aimed for a piece of springboard left over from Snowanna's track, willing it to not corrupt her data. To her relief it merely flashed blue when she landed and was launched ahead of Virus-Van, her minty exhaust being sucked into the virus' void. She could feel the ground tremble as Virus-Van boosted forward indefinitely, and scrambled to get out of her way. Her teleporting skill set was barely enough to keep away from the virus, who was lashing out with code to create twisted obstacles in her path.

Drifting around a sudden swatch of peppermint trees, Vanellope screamed as the ground ruptured in front of her. From the sinkhole game geysers of black and red code, ripping apart boundary as it searched for the princess. Thinking quickly, she swung her cart clean around and powered into a clump of what was once power up sugar cubes. Now armed with glitching sweet seekers, she fired at the code, cheering when they exploded into benign blue code.

However, Virus-Van used this time to take the lead, its head twisting on its shoulders to glower back at Vanellope. Glaring through her goggles, she ducked behind a row of mirrors when Virus-Van spawned an army of sweet seekers. The mirrors exploded, and Vanellope turned away from the twisted expressions on the images' faces, focusing on the bowl curve of boundary ahead. With mirror shards bouncing off of her helmet—she swore that she would never complain about her character sprite as long as she lived—she sped into the bowl. The bowl was far steeper than she first thought, and she screamed to cover up the Doppler effect the bowl had on the music, which was blaring louder than she thought was possible. Barely able to think past the screeching cords, she spiraled down to the base of the bowl, where a cannon from Bubblebetty's track waited.

As she exploded out of the bowl into blessedly quieter space, she turned to see Virus-Van racing in mid-air beside her. The virus braked, letting Vanellope crash ahead, before raising its arms. All the remaining objects around Vanellope mutated into chimeras of road scenery and, to Vanellope's horror, the other 15 racers. They spazzed and contorted, before revving their demonized engines.

Without a beat Vanellope activated the nitro boost in her cart, doubling up the speed with her teleport to put distance between herself and the chimeras. She could hear Virus-Van laughing from wherever it was, but shut it out of her mind. It was trying to distract her from her goals, and she couldn't let that happen, no matter what the virus threw at her.

The chimeras had been spawned with unlimited power ups, so Vanellope found herself dodging and teleporting ice cream cannonballs and hard candy hail and whipped cream hoses, all while keeping an eye out for Virus-Van. The virus was still racing in the air, boosting indefinitely with a clear stretch of path. Cursing cheap bosses everywhere, Vanellope skirted a boundary ramp and found herself rising in the air. With the lack of collision detection in the crashed...wherever this apocalypse was, she was ramping up a wall as if it were a straight track, but she decided not to question the physics. Growling in her throat, she let her cart fall from its ascension into a patch of leftover scenery. The patch in particular had more power up sugar cubes, and Vanellope wanted to try something.

After all, if she could teleport herself, why couldn't she teleport anything else?

Focusing on the growl of the engines behind her, she waited for the moment of impact, then sucked in her breath. Once the game activated the power up—a puddle of glitching sour goo—she exploded in a flash of blue, respawning over the 15 chimeras for a split second before reappearing behind them. That split second was all she needed to drop her load, and she swerved around the suddenly immobile enemies, laughing in victory.

Ahead she could see Virus-Van's head still watching her, this time with an expression of what appeared to be deep-seated rage. Shuddering despite herself, she raised her chin and stuck out her tongue, tasting the threat of violence the virus was promising. The blank gray sky flashed a sickening red, and Vanellope boosted forward just as black blocks of pixels fell from the heavens. For a moment she remembered how she was attacked by pyres of cy-bugs, and tightened her grip of the steering wheel. If her cart was wrecked like before, she was as dead as the blank faces of her friends and allies that the virus had corrupted.

Racing towards the never ending horizon, she wondered if Virus-Van knew where the track was, or if it was just going to spawn the finish line. Then again, why bother racing at all if it could've defeated her right from the start with a slash of code? Spinning around a larger chunk of pixels, she spared a thought towards King Candy. Had he lived to see Sugar Rush, would he have raced the same way? What about all the other Sugar Rush consoles in the world, did the King Candys in them toy with their Princess Vanellopes?

As she used a boost pad to edge out a falling brick, she glared at the virus high up in the safety zone. Oh, it wanted to race, but not without being assured of its victory. Just like Turbo, who lorded his skill over the other racers because he was so much better and able to beat them every time. Ralph said when he turned into a cy-bug, he had Ralph on the ropes, but chose to gloat when all hope seemed lost; his pride cost him his life.

Struck by the thought, Vanellope was almost crushed by the corrupted data. Wasn't this virus a remnant of Turbo? And wasn't it acting just as Turbo did? A half-baked plan formed in her brain, and she went with it; sometimes the best tasting cakes were the ones that had spent the least amount of time in the oven.

Slowly accelerating forward, she screamed at the virus, "Hey, what 'cha doing way up there? Too afraid to come and face me like a real boss?"

Virus-Van braked violently, turning its cart all the way around to face Vanellope.

"Oh yeah, that was a nice trick with the other racers, but really? Aren't you good enough by yourself to race me by yourself?"

Vanellope was close enough to see the murder in the virus' red-black eyes, to see the flush rising on sickly mint cheeks.

"Well I'm here, virus! I'm here in the race you wanted! So are we gonna finish this or not?!"

The virus flickered for a moment, then teleported directly over Vanellope, who was barely able to twist out of the way. Now they were close enough to battle with their fists, the tangled aura of Virus-Van's code blasting away at the blue-white bubble Vanellope found herself surrounded by. Staring down the glitching red eyes, Vanellope smirked. "Nice to see you showed up."

Her speed was matched by Virus-Van's, and together they careened through the falling pixel bombs. Virus-Van raised a mangled hand and the pixel storm ended, but now the ground terra formed into a convoluted mess of ramps and dips, too narrow for even ne cart to pass through safely. The virus laughed its demented laugh before powering off, leaving Vanellope once more. She narrowed her eyes before carefully balancing up a spider-thin track, yelling when she suddenly was dropped onto her side. Focusing on the tracks, she saw the double stripes built in, and scrambled to speed up.

Had she been able to focus less on escaping the dissolving pathways, she would've seen a spire from her destroyed castle being pulled through the air by red wires. She was made aware of it when it slammed down behind her, the force knocking her cart into the air and down harshly. Vanellope teleported out of another swing, but felt herself tire from the constant abuse of her power. Virus-Van was ahead, writhing madly with laughter, as it picked up more of the castle to throw at Vanellope.

Ducking down to avoid the pinwheeling legs of Sour Bill, who was stuck to the spire, Vanellope made one last desperate teleport before feeling her energy gage finally fit zero. Virus-Van suddenly pulled back to allow Vanellope to take the lead, only to chase after her enemy like a raging monster out to devour the princess and the last hope of Sugar Rush. Throwing her body with every curve of her turns, Vanellope struggled to control her breathing; Virus-Van wasn't a passive boss anymore.

Something crackled under her cart, and Vanellope looked down to see herself racing over a large mirror, her true image reflected back at her. The Vanellope in the mirror seemed far calmer than the one trying to not die above, and Vanellope envied her reflection. The two racers met gazes, then Mirror-Vanellope winked. Before Vanellope could hope to understand what it meant, Mirror-Vanellope peeled away to race ahead, and images of a thousand Vanellopes, all in different dresses and hairstyles and eyes but all vibrant and confident, cheered the racing image on in the same English-Japanese cheers that Vanellope couldn't understand. The real Vanellope barely had the presence of mind to evade the swinging castle bits, enraptured by her reflection.

Mirror-Vanellope raced as if this was a mere time trial, cool as as an after-dinner mint and twice as creamy. Winking at Vanellope, Mirror-Vanellope pointed ahead. Looking up, Vanellope saw one last power up sugar cube flickering in the far distance. Mirror-Vanellope grabbed her own power up cube, and spun around to face the mirror virus, who seemed three times as deadly as the Virus-Van chasing down Vanellope up above. The mirror racer then loaded a power up Vanellope hadn't seen before—her own power up. A large crown filled with mint and vanilla gems span around Mirror-Vanellope's cart, and she raised a delicate gloved hand. The crown was launched to encircle the mirror virus, and Mirror-Vanellope turned back to salute Vanellope before the mirror cut off abruptly.

With the cheers echoing oddly in her mind, Vanellope avoided one last smash of a castle bit before gaining that odd power up. She turned to face Virus-Van, and lost a moment in the glare the virus was giving her. In those eyes she saw rage she couldn't understand—but couldn't she? That virus was Turbo's creation, but it had taken on Vanellope's form, filled with every bit of resentment and hatred she had ever felt towards the other racers when she was a glitch. The same resentment and hatred that still tingled in her toes whenever Taffyta made a joke at her expense, whenever the doughnut cops came too close.

Vanellope saw her own feelings in the code of the virus, and finally understood what kinds of feelings could drive a person to commit evil great enough to destroy entire games.

She raised her chin and waved her hand just as Mirror-Vanellope had. The crown floated around her cart before flinging out towards Virus-Van and encircling the monster. For a moment nothing happened, then the crown exploded, sparkles and flashes illuminating Vanellope's cart. She swung herself around and saw the finish line ahead, the enraged howling of Virus-Van just a faint buzz against the cheering in her mind. The shockwave of the explosion filled her teleport energy gage with a glitch of blue, and she rocketed forward, the cheers growing louder and louder until the language clicked to English.

_Long Live the Queen!_

With a final drift that seemed to slow the world down to the wind flipping her bangs against her forehead and sending the sparkles on her cart to flow out behind her like a fire trail, Vanellope crossed the finish line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there's the race, ending with Vanellope taking back what is hers, beating the final boss and becoming Queen of Sugar Rush. But don't think that's the last you'll see of the virus; there's still one more chapter before the epilogue ;)
> 
> Mirror-Vanellope is basically the Vanellope that all Vanellopes in all the Sugar Rushes aspire to become: the best racer of the game, completely confident in her abilities and personality, and the kind of queen that can beat down evil monsters with the ease of slipping on a fitted pair of racing gloves. And since Vanellope's data was cloned into the mirror, Mirror-Vanellope decided to help her fellow racer out. What a nice lady.


	7. What Has Been Suffered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Queen Vanellope does what it takes to save her kingdom.

Vanellope drifted to a stop, watching the finish line glitch into the air. A fizzling deep in her stomach filled out to the tips of her fingers and toes, and Vanellope felt something slide into place. In that moment all her fears and hate were gone, replaced with this odd sort of confidence that of course she was going to fix Sugar Rush and save her friends, it was to be expected by someone like her. She gazed backwards towards Virus-Van, who was clawing at the ground, red code whipping into the ground to make jagged gashes. It didn't seem to even notice her anymore, focusing on destroying everything in reach. Vanellope felt a small twinge of pity, then turned away from the sight towards the gold cup falling from the sky. It morphed into a golden cartridge before floating down to her gloved hands, and she could see the text flashing across the panel.

"...to enter debug mode using this Game Genie, enter cartridge and press A + Start; this will take you to the sound test menu where you can...all cups unlocked...play in debug mode...restore!" Vanellope looked up and searched for the sunken code well in the far distance, shifting into gear before speeding off. The ugly sounds of Virus-Van drifted away as silence finally bore down onto the wreckage of Sugar Rush, the quiet echoes of  _Long Live the Queen!_  still sounding off in her mind. She was Queen of Sugar Rush now, just like Mirror-Vanellope, and Vanellope bit down a smile. Maybe they had a chance after all.

The Nintendo controller was in sight, and Vanellope swung her cart to park parallel by the dome encasing the code well. She slid the cartridge into the golden lock and the bubble melted away with a glitch of golden code, and she pressed A and Start. The controller glitched into gold before melting away, revealing the code well. Vanellope didn't have anything to tie her down, but her new confidence assured her that everything was going to be alright, so she slipped into the darkness as if it were a dip into a taffy pool.

The code of Sugar Rush was barely visible amongst the dark red virus eating away at its programming, only a few code boxes and programming connections left untouched. A golden code box appeared at her right, representing the Game Genie's influence in the game; it was flashing "debug mode" across the top, and Vanellope swam with the box down towards the uncorrupted code. She found her own code box and the memory banks of the racers and citizens, and was shocked at how little game data was spared from the virus. She slid in the golden box next to her own, and a menu popped up with all the songs from their game. "Debug mode, huh? Time to debug the game."

She looked at the notes scribbled down on the edge of the box, then entered in the main theme of Sugar Rush twice, followed by her personal fanfare, Marzipanne's track three times and the ending credits. The Game Genie then spawned a large switch code box, directions replacing the sound test menu. "To internally restore Sugar Rush, attach this code to any accessible programming, which will then spawn the switch to the modifier. Flipping the switch will then restore Sugar Rush to...it's factory settings..."

Vanellope let herself float freely amongst the dimly glowing code, lost in thought. A factory reset would eliminate the virus for good, that she knew with a conviction from deep within her data. But wouldn't that erase all of their memories? She didn't want that—she didn't want to lose her friendship with Ralph, or to forget all the good times she'd had within Sugar Rush right before the virus attacked. Vanellope slid off her goggles, feeling the white material slide on her gloves. A factory reset would respawn her as Sugar Rush intended: Princess Vanellope von Schweetz, a perfect racer who was never a miserable glitch who couldn't leave the land that tormented her, who was nearly killed by a monster that had eliminated King Candy for good, who didn't have a friend for 15 years...

The restore burned in her mind like boiling cola, and she she shook her head. If she restored the game, she would lose all the painful memories for a clean slate. She could start over and not secretly resent the other racers for years of abuse, she could be so happy...and she could lose what made her the Vanellope that would become President instead of a Princess. She would lose herself, the girl that helped Ralph become the best bad guy there ever was, and most importantly, she would lose meaning of the sacrifices the game had made.

King Candy would come back, and his murder wouldn't even be remembered; all of Turbo's actions would be meaningless. They would all go back to being spoiled little candy brats without appreciation for the pain they'd gone through—what point was the growing friendships of the former palette swaps and Choko if it would all be erased? They wouldn't recall how Marzipanne had never won a race, or how Lemonetta's friendship with The Swizz was the best out of all the racers because of their differences. Candle wouldn't appreciate how she was the only minty racer now, and Sour Apple wouldn't be the most tolerant of racers due to experience with her palette swaps. Everything for the past 15 years would mean less than nothing; a forgotten recipe for a bittersweet frosting, the cake less amazing without it.

Vanellope looked at her own code box, and opened it up with a few taps. Her data was still a tangled mess, but the submenu showed her new racing character model set apart from her other ones, and it was smiling back at her. Queen Candy was its name, as opposed to Princess Vanellope, and Vanellope smiled faintly. If she reset the game, she would lose this new development, this new peace and confidence that came with being queen. And she couldn't have become queen without being a glitch first, because her drive to be a racer as a glitch did more for her racing than any skill set ever did. The memory of Mirror-Vanellope saluting at her before disappearing into the mirror flashed before her eyes, and Vanellope turned back towards the Game Genie program.

A factory restore wasn't an option. But the game needed to be restored to get rid of the virus.

She flipped through the sound menu, even trying out random strings of code to try and get a different option, but the switch stayed as it was. Frowning, she looked back towards the damaged data, and froze in horror.

There was a new code box, dark red and without a name, but she knew it was Virus-Van. And it was growing larger with every second, sucking in the other code boxes like a bottomless pit. She remembered how the virus had been corrupting the data in their race and when she had left—is that how its powers grew, by absorbing other data? A deep electronic hum rose in the code well, more and more programming destroyed by Virus-Van. Deep in her code she could feel the wrongness and the fact that if she was consumed, then Sugar Rush would be lost.

Vanellope looked around frantically, taking in stock of the lost data. None of the other racers existed, nor the racing data or even the announcer. Now just scenery code was being sucked in to the growing red box, which loomed like an evil sun over her little patch of sanity. Her code was next, and she had no options left but to reset.

She pulled out the switch code box, feeling it pulse gold within her palm. With a sudden thought she disconnected the memory banks and linked them to her own code. At once she saw every memory that everyone had ever experiences, all the joys and sorrow of the past 15 years, and she wanted to weep at the overwhelming rush. Blinking back tears, she slid on her goggles and entered the switch into her code. A large switch, much like her own shift gear stick but far more intimidating, spawned next to her, and she grabbed onto it. The very last scenery code was sucked into the red box, and it grew exponentially towards her, sucking away all the light in the code well.

A shadow fell over her face, and Vanellope sighed. A golden glow then surrounded her as she made a certain peace with her programming. The memory was her, and she was the memory, and President Vanellope, Queen of Sugar Rush and it's lifeblood, flipped the switch.

* * *

Ralph squinted at the screen of Sugar Rush, trying to find anything except glitching darkness.

He and many of the other characters in the arcade were piled into the DDR machine, witnessing the fall of the racing game. When Vanellope had fallen through the bridge, Felix had to drag him back to their own game, lest they too would go out of order. Now Felix was with Sergeant Calhoun, who was being very sweet to her fellow hero, but Ralph couldn't tease them for their affections. Not when Vanellope was probably dead somewhere within the glitching game.

Yuni had witnessed Mr. Litwak put Sugar Rush out of order from the DDR machine, and more importantly had seen the desolate wasteland that Vanellope was in. She had told her fellow avatar Emi, who told a visiting Frogger, who told Modern Sonic at the GCS, and then he told everyone within 15 minutes that a virus had destroyed Sugar Rush and they totally needed to see it. As soon as the arcade closed, all of the arcade games had piled into the DDR machine to witness the meltdown of Sugar Rush; Ralph was the first one to arrive, and had witnessed Vanellope's race against Virus-Van with the best seat.

He was terrified. He had beaten against the DDR screen to try and get at Vanellope, but was held back as Yuni yelled that he was going to break their game as well. Then Felix told the assembled characters what he knew, with Ralph still scrambling against the screen, and then everyone watched in awe as Vanellope raced against nightmares that could only come from the most broken of games.

She had won. She had beaten the virus and Ralph cheered louder than anyone else, but then the virus had done something to the screen and fear now filled his gut; who knew what Turbo's last parting gift had done to his sweet little friend?

The other villains had made a cluster around Ralph, offering pieces of wisdom and anecdotes about characters who had survived glitches. M. Bison himself had escaped a game that had been hacked by a malicious little twerp, and had been regenerated into his current console as his memory had overwritten the blank slate of the other character. Ralph found himself begging for Vanellope to fight her way out, all the other racers be damned, because that was his friend in there.

He owed Vanellope everything. She had showed him out to be a a good bad guy, she had whipped the Nicelanders in line with Felix's kinder nature, and most of all, she was his first friend. She had understood him, and now she was going to be destroyed or corrupted or completely fine as Mr. Litwak pulled her plug in the morning, and none of Turbo's lies had ever struck him so deeply.

A low hum filtered into the DDR environment, and Ralph watched as Sugar Rush flashed blue before shutting itself off. Gasps of horror and sadness filled the air, all drowned out by Ralph. He yelled and banged his fists against the screen, then collapsed against the ground, holding back sobs. She was gone, it was all gone—

"Hey, the game turned itself back on!"

Emi's voice cut over the din, and there was a sucked-in silence as they watched Sugar Rush's screen flicker blue and gold before starting up to its start menu, its cheerful Japanese theme bringing Ralph back to his senses. He pushed his way out of DDR and into the tram, barely registering Felix's calls to wait. As the tram sped into GSC, he had only one thought on his mind: Vanellope.

* * *

In the code well, the programming glowed bright and perfect against the darkness. There wasn't any hint of red, it was all brand spanking new, the code spiraling around the core character. The code box suddenly flickered, causing all of Sugar Rush's lifeblood to flicker blue and gold. The flickering grew as Princess Vanellope von Schweetz's code box glitched and trembled, before exploding outwards. The code flashed a bright, blinding white, before settling down again, and a second menu popped up on the game's screen, inviting gamers to either race or dive into the story of Princess Vanellope and her quest to become queen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much shorter chapter than usual, but I promise that the epilogue will take care of that. Thank you to all that have read up to this point, and I hope that you enjoyed the chapter!


	8. What Has Been Reborn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the end is not an end but simply a starting point for something sweeter.

Ralph ran through GSC as fast as he could, pushing through the surge protector and into the terminal for Sugar Rush. His one-track mind didn't register that a series of carts were lined up to transport characters; all he knew was that cart + Ralph = Vanellope faster. He sped down the cable into the racing console at the max speed the cart would allow, before slamming into the end of the track and falling out onto the sour rainbow bridge. Ignoring his aches and pains, Ralph thundered down the bridge, half-running and half-falling to the bottom. At the bottom was an unfamiliar racer, but he didn't care if she was a glitch or the final boss; he needed to find Vanellope. "Hey you! Kid with the hair!"

The girl turned towards him, pinkish red hair swept into a bun with candy colored dumplings pinned in a bow. "Wait, who are you—"

"Where's Vanellope? I need to talk to her!" Ralph had to keep himself from shaking the girl, but his hands trembled. What if Vanellope was injured, or made a glitch again, or even deleted—

"Vanellope-hime is currently getting ready for the Random Roster Race, which is going to take place in...sweet red bean I need to go!" The girl hiked up her kimono and ran to her cart, yelling back at Ralph, "You can talk to Vanellope-hime after the race but before the arcade opens!"

Ralph ran after her speeding cart, slipping on a sour patch and nearly eating cake. But as long as he got to Vanellope it was going to be fine, he had to make sure she was ok. The memory of the virus destroying the graphics of Sugar Rush right before the game was reset hit him like a falling brick, and he ran faster. He saw the edge of the track ahead, filled with much more grand stands and little candy folk than he remembered being there before. At the top of the largest grand stand filled with vanilla cream people was a girl in a pretty mint-colored dress and matching tiara, waving to the racers. It was Vanellope, and before he could call out she jumped down the slide, her dress flying off to reveal her white and mint racing suit with the paper cup skirt. Ralph crashed through the lollipop field to see the racers speed off into the distance, Vanellope in first place as always.

Ralph sank down on the sidelines, feeling relief fill his bones. She was alright, she was fine, and he was going to throttle her for putting herself in such danger with the virus before telling her how proud he was. The race ended quickly with Vanellope taking her place in the avatars of the day, and Ralph waved at her. She was busy talking to that red headed girl, so he walked down to the track to greet her in person. The other racers backed up in alarm as he came—odd, but granted they didn't have many good memories of him—and Vanellope turned his way. He smiled. She gasped. "Vanellope!"

She raised her hand and he waved back, but then the doughnut cops came from behind to wrestle him to the ground. He sputtered, before yelling out at Vanellope. The girl furrowed her eyebrows, before commanding the cops to escort "that outsider" out of Sugar Rush before the arcade opened, then turned back to her conversation.

Ralph didn't notice being dragged across Sugar Rush and dumped on a cart, or Felix waiting on the other side to take him back. He didn't notice the other character's condolences or pity, and he didn't notice Felix rubbing small circles on his arm.

All he knew was that Vanellope didn't recognize him, didn't know him at all. She was reset along with their friendship, and a dark void opened up where her place in his heart used to be.

* * *

Taffyta giggled as Rancis slipped in a taffy patch, snorting into her lollipop. They had a heavy stream of traffic today, nearly overloading their circuits. And Rancis was still dizzy from being selected to race 14 times outside of story mode, the poor peanut butter cup. Stretching her arms up over her head, she leaned against a tree. "So you know what was up with that weird guy this morning?"

"Not a clue." Rancis collapsed by the base of their tree, taking off his hat. "The Princess didn't seem to know him, even though he kept yelling her name."

"Maybe he was excited to see us plugged in?" Taffyta paused, then shook her head. "Nah, he was just here for the Princess. Kinda like how Minty focuses on setting off cherry bombs just as Sour Apple comes by."

"I know!" Rancis laughed, trying to catch his breath before the strain of the day knocked him out harder than a sugar crash. "I swear, those two are out to kill each other! Sour Apple only aims her special power ups towards Minty, even if the gamer doesn't want her to."

"I guess that's what happens when two racers are so close in speed and coloring." Taffyta flicked away her spent lollipop. "Except when someone changes their costumes, of course. I never get any cool new flavors though, only between strawberry and different kinds of raspberry."

"At least you change flavors! I'm always peanut butter." Rancis sighed, throwing an arm over his eyes. "I swear, I haven't raced that hard since we tried to lock the Princess out of the Random Roster Race."

"I know, especially when..." They both drifted off, and sat motionless for a moment. "...but we've never done that...right?"

Rancis flickered for a brief moment, before yawning. "I think we're due for a nice power nap. What do you think?"

"That's a sweet idea. Come on, my place is over this way." She helped him back to his cart, their confusion already forgotten.

* * *

Marzipanne spiraled around Adorabeezle, her cornucopia cart kicking up vaporized ice cream. "Come on Adora, just one race!"

"Sorry Marzipanne, I need to go to the Bakery to fix this melting on my cart." Adora stuck her tongue against her cheek, surveying the damage. "That one gamer did a number on me during story mode. The Princess even apologized to me afterwards it was so terrible."

"Oh no, do you think the gamer had it out for you?" Marzipanne came to an abrupt stop, eyes widening for her fellow racer. "I swear, the gamer who was controlling the Princess kept shooting at me too."

"Nah, it was probably some teenage boy like from yesterday." They giggled briefly, then trailed off into an awkward silence; out of the racers these two weren't the friendliest, sticking to other friends more attuned to their flavors. Turning towards Marzipanne, Adora felt something fizzle in the back of her brain, prompting her to say, "Hey Marzi, come with me to the Bakery; we can race over there."

Marzi froze, then hesitantly broke into a smile. "Really?"

"Really." The two then sped out of the ice cream mountain range. Adora didn't know what came over her; she didn't even like the girl that much, she was just too perky and bubbly, and not in a good way like Bubblebetty or Jubileena. But that fizzle made her feel...guilty? Because she wasn't the nicest towards Marzi? Adora didn't know, but shrugged it off. She had a reputation as the happiest and sweetest of racers—after the Princess, of course—so maybe reaching out to Marzi wasn't the worst idea she's ever had.

* * *

The closet was a mess of clothing and accessories, the three girls giggling wildly. Crumbelina tried on her vanilla cookie recolor, sticking out her butt and lips. Jubileena and Bubblebetty laughed even louder, collapsing on Bubblebetty's enormous pile of bubble gum ball jewelry. "You look like a duck!"

"Hey, leave the mutton to Taffyta!" Their conversation was interrupted with more hysteria, Jubileena fighting off the laughter by banging her hand on the nightstand. Wiping her eyes, she stood up and changed into her apple pie outfit, twirling around like a top. "And why don't you leave the spinning out to Gloyd?"

Giggling, Bubblebetty slapped her hands on her knees. "It's not his fault he got in the way of Minty and Sour Apple!" She strung a necklace of rainbow colored bubble gum around her head like a crown, blowing a kiss to Crumbelina. "I'm a pretty princess!"

Jubileena threw off the apple and dressed up in blueberry, grabbing Crumbelina's posh little cap and striking a pose. "No, I'm the pretty princess!"

"Don't let the Princess see you!" Crumbelina snorted, but Bubblebetty stared at Jubileena. "You ok, Bubble?"

"I...you weren't blueberry today, were you?"

"Nah, just cherry and apple and pecan...are you alright? Are the necklaces too tight?" The two helped their friend shrug off the massive amounts of bubble gum she was wearing, but Bubblebetty still seemed stricken. "You look like you need some milk."

"I'll go get some." Crumbelina tripped out of the changing room while Jubileena helped Bubblebetty into a cream puff seat.

"I'm sorry, it's just...I dunno, that blueberry is just familiar to me." Bubblebetty giggled. "I should add more blueberry gum to my outfit, since I'm so caught up about it."

They laughed and laughed harder when Crumblelina tripped and drenched Bubblebetty in milk. Then the greatest clothing battle to ever occur in Sugar Rush happened, the three mixing and matching flavors that they didn't know they even liked.

* * *

Pollipop rolled her eyes as Minty and Sour Apple raced through her track. Apparently her Diet Cola Mountain was so removed from sour apple or mint chocolate chip cake, it was the perfect battle zone to see who was the best racer out of the two. Lounging on an overhead of peanut brittle, she lazily watched the two girls nearly kill themselves.

Minty Candlezaki and Sour Appleblossom were rivals from the second they were plugged in four days ago, pushing their limits to out race each other. If they didn't have the emotions and mindsets of twelve year olds, Pollipop would've bet that they were secret lovers trying to deny their attraction, like in that horrible imported romance flick her citizens were watching. But what did she know, she wasn't out to assassinate her fellow racers in their downtime; Pollipop figured it was a green haired thing.

Minty sped up over the bridge, expertly avoiding the falling Mentos and following cola geysers. But then Sour Apple rammed into her from behind, and they both fell off the track on what amounted to Pollipop's front yard. Tugging on her blonde side ponytail, she leapt up from her seat. This was getting out of hand. Slipping down the mountain, she landed to see the two in each others faces, their shouting echoing in the inside level.

"If you hadn't run into me—"

"Oh please, like you've never done—"

"ENOUGH!" Pollipop glared at the shocked racers, the glow of the cola springs illuminating her red and cola racing jacket. "Why are you two fighting anyway? Didn't the Princess tell you guys to knock it off?"

"Yeah, but you don't understand—"

Minty stuck her finger in Sour Apple's face, yelling something about how someone so sour couldn't be trusted. Then Sour Apple sneered that ice cream cake girls had melted brains, and then they were fighting again, this time over flavors and which one was better.

"Your cart isn't even hard candy—"

"You don't even change flavors, just your cake—"

Pollipop snapped off a stalagmite and hit them over the head with it. "Stop fighting! You guys aren't even rivals by this point, just enemies! Why?" They both raised fingers but Pollipop shot them down. "And don't gimme that stale cake about your carts or colors. What about you two is fundamentally so terrible? What, did you guys steal each other's flavors when nobody was looking?"

The two sputtered into silence, the statement firing off something within their code. After a moment, Minty stammered out an apology about maybe she wasn't being as sweet as she could be, and Sour Apple mumbled about being too sour. They then walked off, hesitantly talking about what was good instead of yelling about flavors, and Pollipop smirked. Common courtesy and sense obviously was a soda thing.

* * *

Gloyd watched Snowanna boogie out to the Halloween theme playing in his track, black licorice bats flapping along with her. Gloyd had been hanging out with her since the arcade closed, seeing how Rancis was too worn out to do anything but be taken care of by Taffyta, and the Swizz was off with his totally long-lost sister Lemonetta. Snowanna admitted that her friends were all without her as well, so they ran off and Gloyd was having a super sweet time.

"Come and dance, pumpkin head!" Snowanna stuck her tongue out at Gloyd, then laughed as he jumped down from his twisted candy tree to shuffle next to her.

She had lied when she said she had friends. For some reason, none of the other girls had clicked with her, not even her fellow icy racers Adora and Minty—Adora spent her time hanging out with Pollipop and being annoyed by Marzi, while Minty was always busy battling Sour Apple. Snowanna didn't know why, but now she was having the time of her admittedly short life goofing off with Gloyd, who seemed to stick to the two other boys in Sugar Rush. The song faded off before looping, and she flung herself onto the candy corn colored path, watching white clouds pass over the only night sky in the game.

Gloyd flopped down next to her, panting slightly. "You...you really know how to dance."

"Yeah!" She smiled brightly, her icy afro shifting under her. "It's more fun dancing with other people though."

"What about your friends?" Snowanna hesitated, and Gloyd patted her shoulder. "You're not the most popular of racers?"

"...I just don't get why. It's like everyone thinks I'm mean enough to abandon them if their cart crashes or something horrible like that. But we just got turned on last week, I haven't done anything!" Snowanna huffed, before pushing down odd feelings of shame. "They're not mean to me or anything, but it's just this...weirdness."

Gloyd thought on what she said, and was surprised to feel a slight glaze of wariness around his perception of her; it's as if something was faintly nudging him that yes, she's the kind of girl that would run right past a fellow racer in danger, even their Princess! He frowned, then the glaze was broken under his growing friendship with her, and he smiled at her. "If they would spend five minutes with you, they wouldn't feel so standoffish. Why don't you have a tea party or something girly like that?"

Snowanna snacked his arm, before smiling. "You think they'd like me?"

There wasn't any hidden distaste in his responding grin. "Trust me, if they can keep up with your dancing, then they won't have time to think otherwise."

* * *

Lemonetta changed her cart into chocolate cream, writing down notes on how the filling seemed thicker than her standard cart, before changing it back into lemon meringue. Lemonetta liked keeping note of what her cart did and didn't do, especially when the gamers were getting closer to battling against her in story mode in the two weeks since they'd been turned on. Sure, she wanted the Princess to become Queen, but she'd be creamed if she wasn't going to put up a good fight.

A pile of whipped cream shifted behind her, and she threw her notepad at the intruder. It rebounded off of The Swizz's face, her giggling lost beneath his cry of agony. "Lemonetta, what was that for?!"

"For sneaking up on me, swizzle head. You know better than to scare me when I'm in the zone." He held her note pad above her head, so she whacked him with her lemon yellow pillbox hat. He then smacked her with the notepad, and that devolved into a slap fight that had them giggling and falling over into the pile of whipped scream. "You jerk, now I'm all sticky!"

"Like I'm any better!" He plopped down in the smothered pile and dragged Lemonetta down with him, the two splashing around in the creamy meringue layer under the whipped cream. "Oh, if the other racers could see us now. I bet that Bubblebetty and Jubileena would drag Marzi and Crumbelina down with us."

"Yeah, they're not as stuffy as Pollipop and Adora. I'm gonna invite them and maybe that Snowanna girl to a tea party tomorrow; you down to come?"

"To a tea party?" The Swizz snorted. "Rancis might go to those girly things, but I have a reputation to uphold."

"Well how 'bout this then?" Lemonetta stood up, wiping cream off her skirt. "The Princess says she's gonna have a huge party once a gamer beats her story mode; she heard one of the gamers promise to come back and beat Taffyta tomorrow. And after Taffyta is me, then Choko then King Candy!" Lemonetta preened at being an upper-level story boss, before a glob of lemon splashed in her face. She narrowed her eyes. "This means war, Swizzle."

"Bring it on!"

The two battled it out in the creamiest sections of her track, putting on a show for some of Lemonetta's citizens. They honestly didn't know why they got along so famously; when The Swizz thought about it too hard his memories got all fuzzy, making Lemonetta appear teal like one of Sour Apple's flavor switches even though none of her costume changes were blue. He didn't worry about it though, as he ducked under Lemonetta's retaliation. If the game was so willing to have them be the best friends Sugar Rush has ever seen, he wasn't going to argue with it.

* * *

Choko made swirls in her green tea, listening to the various heads of candy report to King Candy about the state of Sugar Rush. The past month had seen a heavy influx of gamers, which made her stomach swell with happiness; they were an older game, so to see so much traffic made her hope that maybe Mr. Litwak-sama would update their game to the newer Sugar Rush: World Circuit! Then everyone would have a bigger sugar rush, maybe with new racers.

She turned to see Vanellope-hime sipping her cup of vanilla mocha, and smiled her way. The Princess was being groomed by King Candy to take over once she became queen, with Choko being her personal secretary, much like Sour Bill was to the current leader. Choko was honored to have been picked by the Princess, and had told her as much while bowing as deeply as her kimono had let her.

Vanellope-hime had laughed, sunlight glinting off of her tiara. "You're the most code-savvy racer in the game, considering how you unlocked yourself for the first day," she had said, "and you're my closest friend here. I'm the one who should be honored."

Choko snapped out of her reminiscing when Vanellope-hime spoke up, grinning to herself. She was eager to take part in their monarchy, even making plans to make it a constitutional monarchy to give the racers better participation. King Candy, the gentlest person in the game despite his status as evil tyrant, had declared it to be a very sweet idea, and was currently speaking with Sour Bill to find out if they could change the code to allow for a sort of Parliament.

Vanellope-hime primly set down her cup, then while the council's attention was drawn to the Bakery's supply quota made a face at Choko. They giggled—they would always be children, after all—before Vanellope-hime sighed and turned her gaze out the window.

Choko pondered the odd man that had disrupted their race the first day they had been plugged in. He had addressed Vanellope-hime most rudely, but Vanellope-hime was disturbed by the fact that she swore she knew him but had forgotten. They had chalked it up to his presence glitching their memory banks, but every now and then Choko caught Vanellope-hime staring off towards the exit of their game. King Candy had advised her to take all the racers out to explore the Game Central Station once she had become Queen of Sugar Rush, and Vanellope-hime had agreed.

Now all they needed was a skilled enough gamer to transform Princess Vanellope von Schweetz into Queen Candy. And considering how well a recurring gamer was doing—he had almost won against her, and Choko was the penultimate boss!—it was only a matter of time.

* * *

Fireworks exploded in the sky as Princess Vanellope finally beat King Candy in the final battle of their story mode, just as the arcade was about to close. All of the racers and citizens cheered wildly as Vanellope ascended into the air in a spiral of sparkles and gained the crowned white helmet and goggles that would make her Queen Candy. She landed with the large golden cup and went through her winning animation, a cut scene programming the racers to throw out King Candy and anoint Vanellope as their queen. Their cheering lasted after the gamer left and the arcade closed, Queen Vanellope spinning around in her racing suit.

King Candy formally abdicated the crown to become High Advisor to the Queen, and Vanellope beamed as she finally became queen after nearly three months of being plugged in. Sure, in the races she would be known as Princess Vanellope unless the gamer chose her unlocked Queen Candy outfit, and King Candy was still King Candy, but that was all semantics. She had been ready for so long for this, it seemed like years instead of months...

_Something crackled under her cart, and Vanellope looked down to see herself racing over a large mirror, her true image reflected back at her._

The cheering seemed off to her suddenly stuffed up ears, and Vanellope rubbed her eyes.

_The real Vanellope barely had the presence of mind to evade the swinging castle bits, enraptured by her reflection._

Why was there a mirror piece in the game, and more importantly, what was wrong with the castle?

_The crown was launched to encircle the mirror virus, and Mirror-Vanellope turned back to salute Vanellope before the mirror cut off abruptly._

What...? Vanellope was on her knees, and the cheering was replaced by a high pitched whine, her vision sparking blue and gold.

_She turned to face Virus-Van...That virus was Turbo's creation, but it had taken on Vanellope's form, filled with every bit of resentment and hatred she had ever felt towards the other racers when she was a glitch._

But she was never a glitch, and Turbo..? Vanellope balled hands into fists, trying to blink away the blue code racing behind her eyelids.

_She raised her chin and waved her hand just as Mirror-Vanellope had._

...yes, she had. Vanellope snapped her head back as gold code exploded in her brain, unable to scream or breathe under the force of something coming back to her.

_Long Live the Queen!_

Vanellope struggled to her feet, feeling as if there was nothing left in the entire game, as if she were floating in the code well King Candy warned was off-limits in cases of emergencies. Emergencies like a virus...eating away at their code...until she had...

_The memory was her, and she was the memory, and President Vanellope, Queen of Sugar Rush and it's lifeblood, flipped the switch._

* * *

The seventeen racers silently stood by the sour rainbow bridge leading up to the exit, eyes glued at the hint of metal indicating where their game's programming ended and where the cord began. Their leader made the first step up the ramp, and then they were all running forwards, scrambling against sour-sugar crystals towards the line of carts that would lead them to GCS. They sped down the cord, static flickering against their wheels, and their leader was the first to jump out, running down the steps towards the power strip. She faltered and came to a stop in front of a large man slumped in front of their terminal, his large hands cupping a sugar cookie medal.

She bit her lip, tears filling her eyes, before she wrapped her arms around his neck, crying over and over that she was sorry, that she didn't remember but now she did and everything was all better and everyone remembered and _please_ talk to her he was freaking her out.

She was cut off when he hugged her back, crushing her against his chest, and she laughed despite her tears. "Glad to see you Ralphie."

"Glad to see you too, kid."

* * *

Vanellope spread her arms wide and span in a circle, feeling giddy. Her fellow racers were off exploring the arcade in pairs of two or three, celebrating their victory over Turbo and the reset by seeing everything they were unable to before. Felix and that Calhoun lady—Vanellope giggled when she caught them holding hands—were more or less telling Ralph "I told you so"s, and Vanellope reminded herself to thank them for not giving up on Ralph or her game.

But the heavy stuff could wait. She had her whole life ahead of her, and she was planning to enjoy every flavor that came her way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's Life in 16 Flavors! There's much more after this, but if you're reading this, I'd just like to thank you, because nothing's better than knowing that someone out in the wilderness of the Internet has given my story a loom :D


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